Documents detailing tube failures and other problems at a shuttered California nuclear plant will remain off-limits to the public, a federal panel has ruled.

Administrative judges with the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board rejected a petition seeking to throw out a nondisclosure agreement protecting paperwork related to the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

Activist group Citizens' Oversight had asked that documents be released, arguing that the 8 million people who live near the plant have a right to more information. San Onofre has been closed for a year, following a January 2012 radiation leak inside a steam generator at the San Diego County facility.

"We're concerned about this whole steam generator issue in general," said Ray Lutz, national coordinator for Citizens' Oversight. Plant manager Southern California Edison Co., he said, "should just be releasing everything they can."

The battle over documents comes as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission weighs whether to let Southern California Edison (SCE) partly reopen San Onofre, which provided power to 1.4 million households. Environmental group Friends of the Earth (FOE) has asked NRC to order an in-depth review of the utility's request to start up one generator (Greenwire, Oct. 9, 2012). As part of that case, Edison and FOE jointly agreed to a protective order covering San Onofre documents.

Citizens' Oversight had asked that in place of the panel's directive keeping all paperwork out of public view, judges review requests on an ongoing basis.

Atomic Safety and Licensing Board judges last week rejected the petition because Citizens' Oversight is not part of the FOE proceeding, NRC spokesman Scott Burnell said.

"Therefore Citizens Oversight has no ability to object to the Board's order requiring FOE and [Southern California] Edison to agree on a non-disclosure pact so that FOE has access to the information it needs to argue for a full hearing on San Onofre," Burnell said in an email.

Nondisclosure agreements are standard practice in cases before NRC, Edison said in paperwork filed with the agency. Moreover, it argued, "trade secrets, privileged, or confidential commercial or financial information may be withheld from public disclosure. The information [Citizens' Oversight] seeks to make public was identified by SCE as proprietary information."

Lutz, however, said competitors aren't interested in taking information on the steam generators, given that the equipment from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has been blamed in part for the radiation leak. In addition, he said, SCE already has shared data with rivals as part of the investigation into what went wrong.

"They don't want to have to reveal anything that would embarrass them. That's what this is all about," Lutz said of SCE. "It should be public so everybody could take a look at it."

In particular, he said, SCE should release more information on tube wear inside the steam generators. That was named as the primary reason for the radiation leak. The utility has released some data on the number of tubes that had wear but not the extent of that damage or precise locations, Lutz said.

"That's all contained in these documents that they're keeping secret," he said.

Decision on restart pending

Edison has asked NRC for permission to restart Unit 2 at the plant and run it at 70 percent capacity for five months. It then would be shut down and inspected (Greenwire, Oct. 4, 2012). A decision on that could come as early as March (Greenwire, Dec. 19, 2012).

In the meantime there is a rapid timetable for settling FOE's request that an in-depth review, or license amendment, be ordered before SCE can restart a generator, said Damon Moglen, director of the group's climate and energy program. If NRC grants that process, there will be open hearings with witnesses and cross-examinations.

"We're going to make sure that these issues are aired before the court of public opinion," Moglen said.

FOE must file a brief in the case by Jan. 11, Moglen said. The Natural Resources Defense Council, which supports FOE's petition, files paperwork the following week. SCE then must respond within seven days.

"We believe the public has a right to see all of this information," Moglen said. "That's also why we're persevering in this case, with the hope that we can get a ruling that is going to reveal all of this information."

NRC has made a series of demands of Edison in what's known as a confirmatory action letter, or CAL. In responding to FOE's petition, the nuclear agency has asked its licensing board to decide whether the utility through the CAL already is undergoing a process equivalent to the license amendment.

If that board decided the CAL process is a de facto license amendment, then NRC would order public hearings, Moglen said.

Who will pay?

Separately, the California Public Utilities Commission next week is expected to open an investigation into San Onofre. The state agency by law must examine the need for any plant that has been offline for more than nine months.

The CPUC among other issues will examine whether ratepayers should see a bill reduction in light of San Onofre's yearlong shutdown. Electricity customers of SCE and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. -- which is part owner of the plant -- pay power rates that include costs for the steam generators. They were installed as replacements in 2010 and 2011 at a cost of $671 million.

San Onofre costs included in rates are about $1.1 billion annually, the CPUC said.

For the utility to collect those, the plant is supposed to be "used and useful," the CPUC's Division of Ratepayer Advocates said in August when it urged regulators to cut rates.

"The commission already has ample evidence that [San Onofre] Unit 2 will not be online anytime soon and Unit 3 may never return to service," DRA said in a letter to CPUC commissioners.

Edison, however, cited the pending NRC decision on restarting Unit 2 when it asked California regulators last month to allow it to continue charging customers plant operation costs.

The CPUC also will look at whether Edison should be able to bill ratepayers for the costs of replacement power bought over the last year and other expenses connected to the shutdown.