Aug. 30--SAN ONOFRE -- Faced with a paper trail of minor maintenance problems and mounting pressure from regulators, Southern California Edison has changed maintenance contractors at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

Gil Alexander, a spokesman for Southern California Edison, the plant's majority owner and operator, said Friday that the company has hired Louisiana-based Shaw Industries to conduct all maintenance operations at the seaside plant. Since 1994 that work had been done by multinational Bechtel Inc., which also helped build the plant's atom splitters in the late 1980s.

Shaw also performs maintenance activities at 36 of the nation's 104 operating nuclear power plants.

A division of Bechtel has been working for years on an $800 million project to replace steam generators inside both of San Onofre's concrete containment domes. Alexander said the company will continue to work on that project.

Gentry Brann, a spokesperson for Shaw, said Friday that Bechtel employees will have a shot at retaining their jobs. She said about 400 former Bechtel employees have already completed application paperwork.

"We are in the very initial stages of this work, and expect to continue the hiring process for some time," she said.

A spokesman with Bechtel declined to comment Friday.

Over the last three years, Edison has come under scrutiny from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a litany of maintenance problems at San Onofre, ranging from a fire-watch employee who falsified records to workers who failed to properly hook up wires to batteries attached to backup diesel generators.

Recently the NRC put the plant on notice that it needed to address "human performance" issues. In other words, some employees were not properly following procedures designed to prevent future problems.

David Weisman, a member of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, a California-based watchdog group, said Friday that he and his colleagues still believe that regulators should delay the steam generator replacement program, which is set to begin with a crew cutting a large hole in one of the plant's domes in October.

At a public meeting in May, alliance members asked regulators to delay the replacement program until after Edison can go two straight quarters without getting dinged by inspectors. An NRC official subsequently denied the request.

Weisman said the change over to Shaw only increases his concern about the impending replacement program.

"Starting a huge undertaking like that, just a few months removed from a major change like switching from Bechtel to Shaw, that's a log going on all at the same time," he said. "Especially for an organization that's been having trouble keeping its head above water."

Alexander took umbrage at the suggestion that the switch in maintenance employees might somehow affect proper execution and management of San Onofre's impending date with a concrete saw.

"The two are unrelated," he said. "The steam generator unit of Bechtel is widely recognized as the leading U.S. nuclear industry steam generator contractor. They have been involved for some time in extensive planning with San Onofre personnel for our upcoming replacement project."

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