Calif Nuclear plant ok as fire nears-So Cal Edison

LOS ANGELES, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Wildfires at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County on Tuesday burned within seven miles of Southern California Edison's oceanside San Onofre nuclear power plant, the company said.

So far, the fire "does not pose a threat or danger to our facility, our employees or the ability to operate the plant," said Southern California Edison spokesman Gil Alexander.

The fire at Camp Pendleton covered about 1,000 acres. A 220-kilovolt transmission line in the area was within three miles of the fires, and the utility was keeping an eye on it, Alexander said.

The plant has two nuclear reactors and can generate about 2,250 megawatts of electricity, enough to serve about 1.4 million homes and businesses.

Neither of those reactors was on line on Tuesday.

Unit 2 went off line on Saturday to allow workers to check valves in the cooling water system. Southern California Edison was not saying when the unit will come back but said it will be a short-term outage.

Unit 3 went off line on Oct. 9 for what the company called a planned maintenance outage. It was scheduled to return to service in mid-November.

Once Unit 3 returns, Unit 2 is scheduled for a refueling outage from late November to mid-January.