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Environment

San Onofre's Problems Deepen

By Alison St John / Reporter
Published April 12, 2012 at 12:23 PM PDT
This story was published more than 12 years ago.
San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station
San Onofre's Problems Deepen
Hopes that problems at San Onofre’s Unit 2 reactor might be less serious than those at Unit 3 are now fading. California’s energy agencies are gearing up efforts to get substitute power from decommissioned power plants.

Hopes that problems at San Onofre’s Unit 2 reactor might be less serious than those at Unit 3 are now fading. California’s energy agencies are gearing up efforts to get substitute power from decommissioned power plants.

NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said when he visited San Onofre there was a chance Unit 2 could be restarted before Unit 3, since it’s steam generator tubes might be wearing prematurely for different reasons.

“They need to demonstrate to us that Unit 2 is not experiencing the same kind of degradation,” Jaczko said, “ so it is possible that they could move forward for a different path for restart - but a lot of that will depend on what the causes are.”

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But now Southern California Edison says they’ve found more tube wear in Unit 2, similar though less serious than in Unit 3. The tubes in both steam generators were replaced in the past two years, with a design unique to San Onofre.

Meanwhile, California’s Independent Systems Operator says it has informed AES, the operator of a gas powered plant at Huntingdon Beach, that it wants two decommissioned units there back on line by mid May.

Eric Pendergraft, President of AES, said the company is looking at plugging holes put into the boilers of the two units when they were decommissioned last year. The units were sold to a subsidiary of Edison and taken off line to allow Edison to build another power plant elsewhere, but Pendergraft said the units are legally operable till 2020.

He believes AES will be able to bring the units back on line by May, depending on certain regulatory conditions. He says the California Energy Commission is visiting the plant today.

Meanwhile nuclear watchdog, Friends of the Earth, released a second study today, laying the blame for the problems at San Onofre on design changes made recently when tubes in the steam generators were replaced. The report, by Arnie Gundersen and Fairewinds Associates, says the cause of the premature wear of the steam generator tubes is the same for both units, and is due to making those changes with insufficient review.

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Environment Energy
Alison St John
Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.
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