San Onofre is Problematic
Letter to the Editor

I excerpted the information below from the San Clemente Times of April 20, 2012. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has shut the San Onofre plant down due to releases of radiation from defective generators which are basically two years old or less. See more details on this problem: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/04/friends-of-the-earth-san-onofre-report.html

I condensed some of the article for brevity’s sake—however it is just another example of how problematic Southern California Edison's San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station is now and in the recent past.

This is yet another example of the poor management/maintenance by Southern California Edison. Southern California Edison's San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station has the worst safety record of all the nuclear generation stations in the country. See the following details: http://sanonofresafety.org/

It is time to permanently shut this problematic plant down!

Joe Holtzman
Mission Viejo

Excerpted and shortened from San Clemente Times

A fire in the non-nuclear side of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station at 12:49 p.m. was extinguished but not before plant owner Southern California Edison was forced to declare an unusual event. The fire occurred in an electrical panel in the non-radiological side of Unit 2, according to a news release from SCE. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was immediately notified, the release said. The SONGS fire department responded and extinguished the fire. The unusual event, the lowest of four declarations, was lifted by 1:41 p.m., the release said. "The cause of the fire is now being investigated," the new release said. San Clemente's Emergency Planning Director Jen Tucker said she was quickly made aware of the fire, and at no point was public health and safety threatened.

Both Unit 2 and Unit 3 at the power plant have been offline since January. Unit 2 was pulled from service January 9 for planned refueling and upgrades. Unit 3 underwent a rapid shutdown January 31 after a small radiation and water leak was discovered. Plant owner Southern California Edison has since said that steam generator tubes have shown unusual wear from vibrating and rubbing against one another and internal support structures. Since then, investigators with plant owner Southern California Edison, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Japanese manufacturer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries have been testing the tubes and generators to pinpoint the cause of the premature wear.

It's been a challenging year for SONGS not just for its months-long shutdown. Because of its proximity to fault lines, San Onofre has also come under scrutiny, particularly after the earthquake and subsequent tsunami at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Anti-nuclear protesters have continued to call for SONGS closure and organized a rally on the one-year anniversary of the nuclear disaster March 11. Earlier in the day, Mitsubishi also notified the NRC that it would conduct its own investigation into the tube problems and gave itself an August 31 time frame to complete their work. Victor Dricks, an NRC spokesman, said Mitsubishi's notification had no bearing on the time needed for SCE or his agency to complete their investigations and return the power plant to service. He also said the power plant's Chief Nuclear Officer Peter Dietrich sent a letter today to Elmo Collins, the NRC's regional administrator, updating SCE's commitment to finding the causes for the wear and emphasizing they would not seek permission to return the units to service until their investigators understood the problems.