nuclear-news

Safety and financial woes of USA nuclear reactors

the Public Utilities Commission last week denied a request by Pacific Gas & Electric to bill customers $85 million for its attempt to extend the license of Diablo Canyon, California’s other active nuclear plant. 

More Concerns Over San Onofre Safety, San Diego Reader, By Dave Rice  February 7, 2012  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…..

Meanwhile, the Public Utilities Commission last week denied a request
by Pacific Gas & Electric to bill customers $85 million for its
attempt to extend the license of Diablo Canyon, California’s other
active nuclear plant. Rulings concerning the central coast facility
are closely watched in Southern California, as San Onofre faces a
parallel road on its quest to extend the plant’s operating license for
20 years beyond its current expiration in 2022.
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/news-ticker/2012/feb/07/more-concerns-over-san-onofre-safety/

February 8, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, USA