X Edison CEO Theodore Craver now says San Onofre could be permanently shut before the end of the year. "Edison is hemorrhaging cash at San Onofre," says FOE's Damon Moglen. Craver is "a financial guy" who is now just "looking for the right numbers to get to shut-down."
It's common in the nuke blackmail business for a utility to threaten to shut a reactor where jobs and power are desperately needed. But Edison now has a more desperate theme. The spread of solar throughout southern California will bring far more jobs than San Onofre can begin to promise. A new feed-in tariff in Los Angeles has helped spread solar panels throughout the region ( http://prn.fm/2013/04/08/
Edison billed southern California ratepayers roughly $1 billion for San Onofre in 2012 even though it generated no juice. The CPUC would probably let them do it again, but public awareness and anger levels have soared. Major media throughout the region have been pummeling Edison, largely over economic issues.
Should San Onofre stay dead, its power void will fast be filled by cheaper, cleaner, safer green technologies destined to make southern California a major focal point in the global march to Solartopia.
This shutdown would take the number of licensed US reactors down to 100. With others on the brink at Indian Point, Vermont Yankee, Oyster Creek and elsewhere, the race to shut the world's nukes before the next Fukushima is turning the so-called nuclear renaissance into an all-out reactor retreat.
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