Edison Lines Up Consultant to Find a Plan to Get Waste out of San Onofre

摘要

The long search to find a way to move the 3.55 million pounds of nuclear waste off the premises of the now-shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station took another step forward when the plant's operator, Southern California Edison, announced it has hired a consulting group to "develop a strategic plan" to relocate the spent fuel to a "commercially reasonable" facility. The utility, known as SCE for short, signed a 20-month contract with North Wind, Inc., a firm based in Idaho with experience in nuclear facility operations and management._One of the members of the consultancy team will be Ernest Moniz, the former secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy during the Obama administration. "The North Wind team is uniquely qualified to lead this effort and provide a roadmap that will benefit the local community, SCE customers, other stakeholders and the nuclear energy industry," SCE senior vice president Kevin Walker said in a statement. Monetary details of the contract between SCE and North Wind were not released. The money will come from the plant's nuclear decommissioning trust fund, which comes from ratepayer dollars accumulated over the years.