Thursday, February 21, 2013

State Utility Regulator to Hear from SCE and SDG&E Ratepayers re #SanOnofre





PRESS RELEASE AND MEDIA ADVISORY FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

State Utility Regulator to Hear from SCE and SDG&E Ratepayers:
NOT ONE MORE PENNY!

Ratepayers Losing Patience with CPUC’s Inaction on Refunds for Defective Nuke Reactors, now Inoperable for More than a Year

EVENT DETAILS:
Event: Press Conference by Coalition to Decommission San Onofre
Date/Time: Thursday, February 21, 2013, 1:15 pm
Location: Outside the Costa Mesa Community Center, 1845 Park Ave., Costa Mesa

Event: CA Public Utilities Commission Public Participation Hearing
Date/Time: Thursday, February 21, 2013, 2 - 5 pm and 6 – 9 pm
Location: Costa Mesa Community Center, 1845 Park Ave., Costa Mesa
Note: From 2 - 3 p.m., comment by elected representatives and government officials

Event: Public Rally to Send a Message to the CPUC
Date/Time: Thursday, February 21, 2013, 5:15 pm (Between the two CPUC Sessions)
Location: Outside the Costa Mesa Community Center,1845 Park Ave., Costa Mesa

February 20, 2013 (COSTA MESA, CA) – When the state’s utility regulator returns to Southern California for the first time since opening its investigation into the outage of the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant, now going on 13 months, it will hear from ratepayers: NOT ONE MORE PENNY from SCE's and SDG&E's captive customers for the defective San Onofre Nuclear Reactors!

Coalition to Decommission San Onofre will host a Press Conference at 1:15p, and Rally between the 2 sessions for Public Comment (5-6p).
The California Public Utilities Commission is holding a “Public Participation Hearing" to "hear from the public about whether the CPUC should remove the value of any portion of the SONGS facility from rate base, disallow rate recovery of any expenses related to the operation of SONGS, and/or make any findings of fact, conclusions of law, or orders directing SCE to take specific actions as a result of the non-operation of SONGS."

Please note that this meeting is explicitly not for organizations that are already parties in the CPUC investigation, but any members of those organizations can still appropriately speak at this meeting.

The Coalition to Decommission San Onofre believes:

>There should be no further delay. The CPUC analyzed the steam generator project before it was originally approved and found that operating the plant with only one steam generator was not financially viable.[1] Why spent months and years investigating it again? Close it now.

>Ratepayers of the monopolies SCE and SDG&E must be REFUNDED the hundreds of millions of dollars already paid through electricity bills for these defective steam generators and not charged for the rest of the $700 Million cost of these flawed-design steam generators.

>Ratepayers must be REFUNDED the hundreds of millions of dollars already paid through electricity bills for all the inspections, regulatory costs, and replacement power that Edison's defective steam generator design has cost us.

>Edison must be STOPPED from running up the bills in the hundreds of millions of dollars to get the defective San Onofre Unit 2 nuclear reactor ready to restart, in advance of the requisite approval by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

>San Onofre must be DECOMMISSIONED NOW to cut ratepayer losses and invest those saved funds in our renewable-energy economy. Ratepayers have already paid $3 Billion into the Decommissioning Trust Fund for this nuclear power plant through electric bills, and it is time to put that money to use.

>SCE must be held accountable for not filing the actual costs incurred for the Steam Generator project when the project was "done" as required by the CPUC, but instead delayed the report for two years after they had told the investor community that the project was done.

>The CPUC is responsible for making sure our money is spent wisely. This project had almost no oversight, giving Edison a blank check lump sum and conducting no project reviews to insure the replacement steam generators would function as specified and to insure that funds were actually used for the project and not skimmed as profit by Edison.

Community Outreach Funds Misdirected by SCE:

SCE sees "community outreach" as a treasure chest of funds to polish their tarnished image through targeted public relations campaigns, including donations to various community groups and costly advertising to tout the "safety" of the innocuously acronymed "SONGS".

The community sees "community outreach" as educating the public about crucial safety and evacuation procedures in the event of an accident. This view of community outreach has not been achieved despite the funds dedicated for that purpose, at least in the view of the public.

Consider the following[2]:
Most hospitals do not have radiation detectors required to properly shelter-in-place, nor can they provide decontamination services on a large scale. All the nearly 100 Community Clinics in the area and most skilled nursing facilities, teachers and school administrators are untrained to shelter in place for a radiological event and do not have the needed equipment. We still don’t know how to shelter in place children on a field trip, on a school bus, or at a high school football game. We still haven’t figured out how to decontaminate the inside of an ambulance or police/sheriff’s cars, or how to protect first responders out in the field during an event. We still haven’t figured out how to communicate a large scale radiological event to the multi-cultural population which speaks 85 different languages in San Diego County alone.

All of these issues require intensive education and training which costs taxpayer dollars, and in tight budgets, health facilities have to prioritize Emergency Response to issues such as disease outbreaks or natural disaster related issues such as fire and earthquakes. Federal HRSA funding to hospitals for Emergency Preparedness and Response training and equipment is scheduled to end THIS YEAR.

[1]http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/word_pdf/FINAL_DECISION/52271.pdf -- CPUC Decision 05-12-040, 2005-12-15, See pg 65 "XIII. Cost-Effectiveness Conclusion" and "Findings of Fact" #153 (pg 96) "The split shutdown scenario is more costly than shutting both units down when one unit reaches the plugging limit." This fact was determined assuming the steam generator that was operating still could run at capacity, not 70% of capacity.

[2] SOURCE: Deanna Polk, RN, PHN, MSHS (Master's of Science in Homeland Security/SDSU) specializing in Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Response, with 15 years of Emergency Preparedness planning and response in San Diego County.

For More Information:
Ray Lutz, RayLutz@CitizensOversight.org / 619-820-5321
Martha Sullivan, marthasullivan@mac.com or 858-945-6273

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see also:whats up: 2.21 COSTA MESA CA - CPUC Public Participation Hearing on #SanOnofre


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