The facility will soon be dismantled, Southern California Edison says

Jun 8, 2013 21:01 GMT  ·  By

California's San Onofre nuclear power plant is to be permanently shut down after more than 4 decades of activity, Southern California Edison announced in a press release this June 7.

Now that it has been retired, the facility is to be dismantled, spokespeople for Southern California say.

This nuclear power plant was first shut down in 2012, shortly after a radiation leak was discovered.

Despite efforts to restart it, it appears that in the end it made more sense to retire it than risk endangering the 8 million people living in its proximity.

More so given the fact that specialists were unable to say how long it would take for the plant to become operable again.

Ted Craver, chairman and CEO of Edison International, parent company of SCE, explained the decision to shut down this nuclear plant as follows:

“SONGS [San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station] has served this region for over 40 years, but we have concluded that the continuing uncertainty about when or if SONGS might return to service was not good for our customers, our investors, or the need to plan for our region’s long-term electricity needs.”

Presently, high officials have not figured out how they will manage to replace the electricity that was being fed into the grid by SONGS.

However, they say that they are working on sorting out this issue and that they will soon come up with an adequate solution.

As was to be expected, environmentalists welcomed the decision to shut down this plant. They hope that it will not be long until other nuclear power plants now operating in other parts of the United States will also be retired.

“We have long said that these reactors are too dangerous to operate and now Edison has agreed.”

“The people of California now have the opportunity to move away from the failed promise of dirty and dangerous nuclear power and replace it with the safe and clean energy provided by the sun and the wind,” Friends of the Earth President Erich Pica said, as cited by Inhabitat.