California Nuclear plant shuts down reactor as precaution
A woman and her dogs walk past the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station that sits on the shore of the Pacific Ocean in North San Diego County, California March 14, 2011.
Credit: Reuters/Mike Blake
LOS ANGELES |
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - One of two reactors at the San Onofre nuclear power station in Southern California was shut down on Tuesday after a small leak was detected in a steam generator tube, but the incident posed no risk to the public or plant workers, the facility operator said.
The reactor unit, which normally provides 1,100 megawatts of electricity, was shut down at about 5:30 p.m. local time as a precaution and will remain off line for a least a couple of days, said Gil Alexander, a spokesman for Southern California Edison.
The plant's only other reactor already had been deactivated for a scheduled refueling and technology upgrade, he said. But the utility has ample reserve electricity, which it buys from independent power producers, to continue meeting customer demands while the two reactors are off line, the company said.
"We don't expect any impact on our customers tomorrow," Alexander told Reuters.
The two reactors together normally produce enough electricity to serve 1.4 million average-sized households in Southern California.
The leak, which Alexander called "very minor," was initially detected by sensors and occurred in the closed system that circulates water from the reactor to thousands of steam-generation tubes.
Although the water is radioactive, the leak was confined within the containment vessel surrounding the reactor, and there was no release of radioactive material to the atmosphere, Alexander said.
He said the incident was so minor that neither Edison procedures nor Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules required a shutdown, but the company decided to turn off the unit as a precaution.
NRC inspectors who work at the plant, located just south of San Clemente, were immediately notified of the mishap.
Alexander said it takes about 12 hours for a newly halted reactor to cool down fully, so inspection crews are not expected to enter the area where the leak occurred until some time on Wednesday.
Unlike the case of an ammonia leak inside the plant in November, operators saw no need to evacuate any workers on site as a precaution, Alexander said.
(Editing by Peter Bohan)
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According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant has the worst safety record of all nuclear power plants in the entire USA — 10 times worse. And employees are punished for reporting safety violations to the NRC. See reports of safety allegations (complaints) from those who are in a position to know the problems. To learn the facts about this and other related issues, go to http://sanonofresafety.org/
The NRC lowers safety standards to keep old nuclear plants running. And the other regulatory agencies and elected officials have been ineffective in resolving the problems.
And now, the NRC, has virtually given up finding a solution for the radioactive waste with their current proposal to store the waste at the nuclear plants for 200 to 300 years. The two nuclear plants in California (San Onofre and Diablo Canyon) together produce over 1000 pounds a day of highly radioactive nuclear waste when running at 100%.
The meltdown from Fukushima in Japan is still happening and the radiation has reached the United States and beyond. If California doesn’t want to become Fukushima USA, it’s time to act now. It’s not worth the risk. It’s up to us. No one else is going to do it.
NRC it is time for States to Question your Authority
If you have not read the ATOMIC ENERGY ACT OF 1954 (), I would not only encourage you to do so I would ask you and your colleagues to reconsider the whole concept of giving the federal government all control and say so as to the use of nuclear energy as relates to the safety and power needs of California.
In the 1950s, nuclear was very new and not even understood correctly or completely by the experts. This is why the federal government took complete control of the entire industry. To control & produce materials needed to make weapons, to that end they sold the American public on nuclear energy as a future source of power. “Too cheap to meter “was the slogan. This has proven to be totally untrue. Now over 60 years later after much has been learned not only by the federal government but by the states who had to endure the constant radiation problems that persists at nuclear power plants that endanger the public welfare, producing on average 250 pounds per day per reactor. In America we have 5,000,000 pounds of highly toxic nuclear waste setting at our power plants. Which are licensed as “Power Plants not highly Toxic Nuclear Waste Dumps”. For more info go to: http://residentsorganizedforasafeenvironment.wordpress.com/
Gene Stone
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