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Nuclear agency’s concerns increase over San Onofre plant

December 22nd, 2008, 12:16 pm · 7 Comments · posted by

A loose electrical connection that left a battery for safety systems inoperable for four years — from 2004 to 2008 — at the San Onofre nuclear plant has prompted federal regulators to increase their oversight of the operation. (Plant shown at right.)

The nuclear plant near San Clemente, run by Southern California Edison, remains safe, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. But “human performance” and “problem identification” issues that came to light because of maintenance and equipment troubles in recent years have prompted the agency to increase its scrutiny of the plant.

“The plant is safe,” said NRC spokesman Victor Dricks. “But there are performance deficiencies we’ve identified which have not been properly addressed yet. So we continue to focus attention on that site.”

In a statement Monday, Edison officials said they accept the findings of the NRC and will work with the agency to prevent such incidents in the future.

The loose battery connection, discovered in March, powered electrical breakers linked to safety systems, such as an emergency diesel generator. After an inspection prompted by the find, the agency’s inspectors decided to issue a “white finding.”

Problems labeled as white by the NRC are considered to be low to moderate safety concerns. But they are one level higher than “green” findings, which the plant has had a string of in recent years.

Green findings are considered to have very low safety significance. Higher than white is yellow, then red.

“This white finding was issued because of a safety concern, so it would be fair to say our safety concerns are increasing,” Dricks said. “Should people be concerned the plant is not being operated safely? No. We’re not anywhere near that level. We have confidence in the ability of Southern California Edison to operate the plant safely.”

San Onofre has had three “special inspections,” or team inspections, within one year by NRC following a string of problems: the loose battery connection found in March, as well as a faulty diesel generator and an improperly soldered joint in 2007. The soldering flaw prompted shut down of one reactor until the problem could be checked out. (Below, people listen during update on San Onofre by NRC in July in San Clemente.)

The white finding means a follow-up inspection for San Onofre early next year to make sure the electrical problem has been addressed.

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 7 Comments

  • John S. says:
    December 23, 2008 at 8:05 am

    Why is every tiny mishap posted about nuclear plants. If a boiler explodes in a coal or solar plant or people get cut in half from 600 deg steam from a pinhole in a pipe it doesn’t garner anywhere near the hype that a fender bender in the parking lot at San Onofre.

    Time to go nuclear. It has proven to be safe and practical.

  • Herb G. says:
    December 23, 2008 at 5:47 pm

    Let’s see John–maybe the lives of say 16 million people in Southern California could be at risk. Enough said–John.

    Edison has a history of faking it, falsifying documents, and screwing over the rat payers.

  • bloodinthestreets says:
    December 27, 2008 at 8:16 am

    This is how it works John: (refer to the history of how they shut down Rancho Seco, just south of Sacramento, to get the complete script). EVERYTIME there is ANY maintenance issue at a nuke plant, whether it be as trivial as a pile of leaves that have blown into a corner of the yard, or a streetlight burned out, or a lock mechanism on a door that is sticking . . . or ANY other routine maintenance issue such as a redundant recirculation pump that needs replacement, you get people hyped up with fear that “16 million people are at risk”. You do this incessantly, tapping all sources you know in the liberal papers or liberal TV news stations. At the preliminary stages of attack, you ultimately want to:
    1. tarnish the image of the owner of the plant (in this case Edison).
    2. cause numerous excessive safety shut downs of the plant.

    After you manage to start the safety review shut downs, you start to ramp-up in the press regarding how expensive and inefficient the plant is (while repeating the stories about leaves, light bulbs, pumps that were hyped previously.)

  • habanerojo says:
    December 29, 2008 at 10:15 pm

    Hi mr. bloodinthestreets,

    I’m not particularly liberal. I know a few things about science, though. Perhaps you should pull your political rhetoric out of your statement and look at the facts. You can crawl through a pile of coal without anything worse happening to you than needing a trip to the dry cleaners. Try holding some U-235 for, oh, a minute, and see how you fare. The “spent” fuel – like Plutonium 239, is potent enough to kill you – and will keep on being potent enough to kill you for between 24,000 and 100,000 years.

    But another key difference between a coal plant and a nuclear plant has to do with how quickly and how badly things can wrong if it hits the fan. Add up all the coal plant mishaps in history, and you still can’t touch the damage of Chernobyl. So a little extra scrutiny is warranted. Not panic – scrutiny.

    Your argument is saying that the liberal media is to blame for people being afraid of nuclear power. I’m not sure I agree with you. A similar line of thought would apply to commercial aviation. Most of the time, being in a commercial jet is safer than driving. However, when there is an accident, the scale and damage of a jet crash is far greater than a car accident. When you get on a plane, would you prefer that the airline is subject to scrutiny in the press regarding its safety and maintenance record, or would you feel better if the media (in this case, the liberal media, I suppose) simply turned a blind eye to the airline industry?

    The simple fact is that a nuclear plant needs to be held to a higher standard than a coal or gas or hydroelectric plant. I would like to know that their back-up diesel generators are working, and that all of their safety systems are being inspected and tested. There’s too much to lose if they screw up.

  • John S. says:
    December 30, 2008 at 4:01 pm

    ☼ The Chernobyl design was an obsolete design scrapped in the 1950s in America. Add that with being operated by a dictatorial government notorious for covering up disasters. There is no comparison.
    ☼ The Arsenic and other waste materials from solar PV panels remain toxic forever and is not scrutinized as much as radioactive materials.
    ☼ Radioactive materials have the unique property of having a transmitter built in that warns you of it’s presence long before it is dangerous.
    ☼ The White House could never be licensed as a nuclear plant because the granite is so radioactive it exceeds the federal limits for emissions from a nuclear generating plant.

    For more nuclear “fun facts” you can read “The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear” by Dr. Petr Beckmann. (However, Chernobyl was not included in that book)

  • emulkimerge says:
    January 12, 2009 at 6:44 pm

    I think you are thinking like sukrat, but I think you should cover the other side of the topic in the post too…

  • Tom P says:
    January 18, 2009 at 11:02 pm

    Considering we’re overdue for a large sized earthquake and have one of the highest populations of any urban area, can we really be so nonchalant about safety at San Onofre? “Oh it’s just a white finding.”

    Tourism is one of our biggest industries…how many people will want to come to Disneyland if San Onofre goes Chernobyl? Or if our beaches are irradiated? It would also isolate LA from San Diego since its right off a major freeway and put many families as well as one of our major military installations at risk.

    Let’s even bring it home, what if we had a leak and now your home is irradiated because someone forgot to make sure the emergency generators are working properly? Or a radioactive cloud ends up dropping nuclear material all over southern california??

    Nuclear power isnt safe in the slightest. We have to transport the waste through peoples neighborhoods and still have no place to store it. It’s half life is 50,000 years. Even if the Yucca Valley reserve is established we STILL have to transport all this highly toxic material there on rails laid over 100 years ago where conductors are text messaging kids and crashing into other trains and hope that it lasts for 50,000 years without leaking once its there. Thats 2 ice ages, and who knows how many 8+ earthquakes later. We already know that the waste that was generated in the 40s-50s has been leaking through their original containers and into the ground water in Nevada.

    Some people say, well why dont we shoot the waste into the sun and let it burn up that way. Well thats a great idea, until the rocket explodes on its way out of the atmosphere. Sure nuclear power is “cheap” from an initial power generation standpoint, but not from the long term storage and safety of the waste. Those costs continue to add up and seem to never end, not to mention they continue to be a threat for longer than we can possibly fathom.

    We can continue to play Russian Roulette and may start feeling emboldened when we we dont get a bullet in our head 5 times in a row, but all it takes it is one unlucky mishap and we’re all glowing for the next 50 millennia. not to mention your precious property value goes into the toilet. think of how cheap beachfront property in corona del mar will be then.

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