Council Meets on April 1

The April 1 Mission Viejo council agenda can be found at: http://dms.cityofmissionviejo.org/sirepub/pubmtgframe.aspx?meetid=1994&doctype=agenda

Although the agenda is light for this meeting, a city watchdog forwarded the following summary about an item of interest.

At the request of Councilwoman Cathy Schlicht, the City Attorney added Item No. 21, a Resolution urging the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to require an “adjudicated license amendment hearing” before restarting Unit # 2. If Southern California Edison had followed this prescribed process before installing the replacement generators, San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station would probably not have experienced this emergency shutdown. An “adjudicated” hearing requires sworn testimony under oath and allows the admission of nuclear expert testimony from those independent of the NRC and SCE.

On Jan. 31, 2012, after a tube leaked radiation into the air, Unit # 3 was shut down less than a year after installation of new generators. Its 807 tubes have now been plugged, and the fueling rods have been removed. Unit # 3 generators are also plagued with welding defects.

At the time of this emergency shutdown, Unit # 2 was offline for regular maintenance, but an inspection of its tubes also revealed unprecedented tube wear, and 510 tubes have been plugged.

SCE wants to start up Unit # 2 at reduced power without fixing the problem, which was a design flaw when over 300 tubes were added to each of the four new generators. The only way to determine if a generator is failing is when there is a radiation leak. It is SCE’s desire to run Unit # 2 for five months at 70 percent power, then re-inspect for more tube wear. However, it appears that reducing power does not reduce the pressure inside the tubes. Reducing power is to reduce vibration. An operational assessment on the present condition of Unit # 2 determined that the Unit can run safely at 100 percent power for a period of 11 months. Then what ?

In the meantime, in addition to paying for the $700,000,000 cost for the failed replacement generators, the ratepayers are also paying $54 million a month to subsidize SONGS.