California SONGS 3 reactor out Apr 14-May 22

LOS ANGELES, March 7 (Reuters) - Southern California Edison said on Friday the 1,080-megawatt Unit 3 nuclear reactor at its San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) will be off line from April 14 to May 22 for mid-cycle maintenance.

The unit last went through a refueling outage mid-October to mid-December in 2006. The unit generally undergoes a refueling outage every 24 months.

Unit 3 and the other operational unit at SONGS, the 1,070-MW Unit 2, were producing power near capacity on Friday morning, a daily U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission showed.

SONGS is located between San Diego and Los Angeles on the Pacific Ocean.

Southern California Edison is one of the largest utilities in the United States, with about 4.7 million customers in Southern, central and coastal California. It is a unit of Edison International (EIX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) based in Rosemead east of Los Angeles.

SONGS is owned 78.21 percent by So Cal Ed, 20 percent by Sempra Energy (SRE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) unit San Diego Gas & Electric, and 1.79 percent by the city of Riverside in Riverside County, California. (Reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by David Gregorio)