Southern California Edison (SCE) estimates that unit 2 of its San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) will remain offline through August. SONGS 3 could be offline even longer.
SCE stressed that safety, not timelines will determine when the units restart. In a statement SCE said that it expects to deliver a plan to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) by the end of July regarding the operation of SONGS Unit 2.
“The NRC, which must approve the restart of SONGS, will then need time to respond. As a result, SCE estimates SONGS likely will remain off line through August,” it said.
“A plan for Unit 3 is expected to take longer to develop,” SCE added.
SCE engineers and third-party experts are currently working on a plan to address the NRC Confirmatory Action Letter (CAL) that outlines actions SCE must complete at SONGS before seeking permission from the NRC to restart either Unit 2 or Unit 3.
As the actions for each unit are completed, SCE will submit its responses to the NRC. There is no deadline for submitting the CAL responses. A series of regularly scheduled inspections and equipment testing will continue as planned over the next couple of months.
Both SONGS units are currently shut down for inspections, analysis and testing. Unit 2 was taken out of service on 9 January for a planned outage. Unit 3 was safely taken off line on 31 January after station operators detected a leak in a steam generator tube.
Related ArticlesForeign ownership blocks licence for Calvert Cliffs 3
