California's San Onofre nuclear plant shut down - Leak in steam generator tube

[Letsbereal]

California's San Onofre nuclear plant shut down
31 January 2012, (MarketWatch)
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/californias-san-onofre-nuclear-plant-shut-down-2012-01-31

Southern California Edison, operator of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, said in a press release Tuesday it has begun a precautionary shutdown of Unit 3 because sensors detected a possible leak in one of the unit's steam generator tubes.

The company said "the potential leak poses no imminent danger to the public or plant workers.

There has been no release to the atmosphere." SCE said personnel will evaluate the cause of the leak and the steps needed to repair it and resume operations.

SCE also said it has ample reserve power to meet customer needs.

The station's Unit 2 is currently offline for a planned maintenance outage, the company added in the statement.

SCE is a division of Edison International.

Press release at http://www.marketwatch.com/story/san-onofre-nuclear-generating-station-operators-perform-precautionary-shutdown-of-reactor-unit-2012-01-31

[supermegaman]

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/02/san-onofre-nuclear-plant-closed-after-radiation-leak/

A small quantity of radioactive gas leaked inside one of the buildings at San Onofre nuclear power plant north of San Diego, according to a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The spokesman said the radiation levels were “barely measurable,” but the plant was shut down as a precaution.

“At no point were the public or our workers in any danger,” Southern California Edison spokesman Gil Alexander told ABC News.

Officials say the radiation leak likely occurred in the steam generator tubes of San Onofre’s reactor #3. The steam system, which is supposed to be shielded from exposure to radiation, was replaced in December 2010. Alexander said plant officials will be conducting an investigation into why the new steam tubes leaked.

Gary Headrick is part of the environmental group San Clemente Green and lives just eight miles away from San Onofre.

“If we don’t make them shut it down, it’s going to be too late,” Headrick said.

San Onofre is one of dozens of U.S. reactors facing new scrutiny after Japan’s nuclear crisis. It is located right on the coast, and in the heart of America’s earthquake country.

It also is right next door to Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps base where 38,000 military families live, and another 32,000 people work each day, all of whom would be in immediate danger if there’s ever a meltdown.

ABC News visited San Onofre the day the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan melted down. At the time, plant officials were eager to reassure the public that the same thing could not happen on the California coast.

[Optimus]

More Concerns Over San Onofre Safety

By Dave Rice | Posted February 7, 2012, 7:26 a.m.

Concerns about safety and the durability of components at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station are continuing to surface as the plant approaches a full week of complete shutdown. The plant’s Unit 3 reactor was taken out of commission after a radioactive water leak was discovered on January 31, while Unit 2 was already down for scheduled maintenance. The Unit 1 reactor was taken offline permanently in 1992.

In the immediate aftermath of the detection of a leak in the piping of a recently installed steam generator, officials downplayed any potential threat, noting that the amount of radiation leaked was so small that Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules did not call for a mandatory shutdown. Later it was disclosed that radioactive gas from the leak had been vented to an auxiliary building that did not have the same safety seals to prevent radiation from being released into the atmosphere as are found on the reactor.

Once the Unit 2 reactor was shut down, it was discovered that hundreds of tubes on the generator, replaced in 2009 as part of a $670 million-plus overhaul using components supplied by Japan-based Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, had suffered significant deterioration over their relatively short service lives. Aside from the one tube known to have failed at Unit 3, two tubes at Unit 2 were found to have more than a third of their thickness worn away, requiring them to be plugged and incrementally increasing the burden on the remainder of the 9,700 tubes in the system. While only these two were worn to the point of needing to be taken offline as a safety precaution, 69 other tubes showed deterioration of at least 20 percent, and more than 800 had thinned by 10 percent or more.

“I’ve never heard of anything like that over so short a period of time,” retired Nuclear Regulatory Commission engineer and researcher Joram Hopenfeld told the Associated Press about the level of damage discovered.

More: http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/news-ticker/2012/feb/07/more-concerns-over-san-onofre-safety/

[Optimus]

San Onofre nuclear plant problem worse than thought: report

By Agence France-Presse
Thursday, July 12, 2012 20:26 EDT



LOS ANGELES — US nuclear regulators published an update on California’s troubled San Onofre power plant Thursday, sparking an expert warning that the problem is more serious than first thought.

A reactor at the nuclear power plant near San Diego was shut down in January after a radiation leak, although the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said there was no danger to the public.

Investigations found unexpected erosion on tubes that carry radioactive water, and the entire plant was shut down, forcing Californian authorities to fire up alternative power generation facilities.

On Thursday, an update on the tube erosion, posted on an obscure part of the NRC’s website, showed the situation had worsened.

“This reveals a far greater problem than has been previously disclosed, and raises serious questions about whether it is safe to restart either unit,” said Daniel Hirsch, a nuclear expert at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The new data shows that more than 3,400 steam generator tubes in the new steam generators at San Onofre have been found to be damaged — about 1,800 in Unit 3 and 1,600 in Unit 2 — he said.

More: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/12/san-onofre-nuclear-plant-problem-worse-than-thought-report/

[zimmer]

From wikipedia: "In the James W. Huston novel, Fallout, Pakistani Air Force Pilots attempt to bomb San Onofre using stolen California Air National Guard F-16s. In the James Bond novel License Renewed by John Gardner, it was one of six nuclear power stations in the terrorist/blackmail plot "Meltdown" planned by The Laird of Murcaldy, Anton Murik. In the science fiction novel Timescape, by Gregory Benford, the nuclear plants at San Onofre raised the water temperature along the adjacent coast, which stimulated aquatic life.
The generating station was also featured in the 1983 documentary film Koyaanisqatsi and the 1988 comedy film The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!. It was featured as the first landmark in the San Diego level of the 1998 video game California Speed.
In the 2011 television series The Event, the fuel rods were removed from San Onofre to thwart the aliens' plan to steal the uranium to build a "transportation array".
In the role-playing game Shadowrun, San Onofre is destroyed by an earthquake in the year 2028 and sealed similarly to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.[13]"

revelation of the method?