San Onofre Design Flaws & Miscalculations Doom Plant

Design flaws & Miscalculations at San Onofre?  

Removing the "stay cylinder" a "safety device" to pack more tubes in these steam generators & then calling that a design flaw or miscalculation, is like removing the seat belt from your car and wondering why you went thru the window when you hit a tree...

And blaming the tree! 

5 Fundamental, Unrepairable, Fatal flaws at San Onofre

18 steam-generator-specific questions for SCE/NRC

San Onofre Request For Assistance

1. Does Southern California Edison (SCE) have the management integrity to be entrusted with the management of the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant? 

2. Has the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) been compromised by SCE such that the NRC is no longer the appropriate government decision maker for determining whether the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant should be allowed to go back into service?


3. Does the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) under Michael R. Peevy have an irreconcilable conflict of intrest given the financial and historical relationship between Peevey and SCE?

4. Should the San Onofre Power Plant be decommissioned?

We are asking any person with information relevant to these four questions to contact our office at (619) 876-5364

Aguirre, Morris & Severson LLP
Attorneys At Law
444 West C Street, Suite 210
San Diego CA 92101

San Onofre Nuke Decommissioned

5 Fundamental, Unrepairable, Fatal flaws at San Onofre

18 steam-generator-specific questions for SCE/NRC

San Onofre Nuke Decommissioned
6-9pm Monday June 18
San Juan Capistrano Community Center
Community Hall
25925 Camino Del Avion
San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675
For copy of official NRC Meeting notice and NRC Contact information go to http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1215/ML12159A310.pdf




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HISTORY WILL JUDGE

To a pro nuker who says nuclear is clean and safe.

I do thank you for the time you took to reply. First I am very happy that for the most part I feel people working in the nuke field are good people and try to be as safe as possible, and that is good. But you are operating under a false premise. Read Dr. John Gofman.

The list of problems with nuclear are as long as my arm. I don’t have time to waste any longer with people who will not look at the facts. I will just say; ask my fellow native brothers of the Dine tribe of Az what the effects of uranium mining was on their people? Ask the people who build houses in Simi Valley CA after the nuclear disaster there and covered up for 20yrs, ask the people of 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl & Fukuashima Japan. Look at how many areas of the world where nuclear testing has been done and are off limits to humans.

My God man look at history, nature can and has undone anything man as been able to do. When one of those rockets going into space has an accident, humans will see the real problems with this technology.

It is very simple we should be making the world a better and safer place for our children and grandchildren to come, not making and storing dangerous and highly radioactive waste for 300,000 yrs for them to deal with, thinking that at some point we will find a way to deal with it and clean it up, just for our convenience at this point in time.

While it is clear that you have the nuclear blinders on and you want to think of yourself as right and that you have done the right thing for 33 yrs. People who think like this are the problem. History will judge us all for our actions.

San Onofre Code of Silence

Real People Work at the San Onofre Nuclear Waste Generating Station, 

And 8 Million Real People Like You Live within the 50 Mile Zone.

I was driving south on Interstate 5 into San Diego County, past the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. The passing landscape was becoming very familiar and I knew I was getting closer to home. Earlier that evening I attended a city council meeting in Irvine and publically voiced my concerns about nuclear power for the first time. Standing in front of Irvine’s mayor and city council members for 3 minutes was both terrifying, and an adrenaline rush at the same time. Part of my mind was grumbling, “What are you doing here? You could be at home in the comfort of your humble farm house, without a care in the world!” Another part of my mind was shouting, “Stand up, raise your voice, and speak the truth, for the future depends on it!” As I drove home, my mind was still wrestling with these conflicting thoughts. Suddenly, a new thought entered my mind, “When did you start despising Southern California Edison?” This new thought disturbed me, because I knew it was true. I do have a disdainful opinion of Southern California Edison, but I did not always feel this way. In fact, there was a time when I had a grateful attitude towards my husband’s former employer. So how did it happen, this change of opinion? As I continued to drive home, I started to think back in my mind to pinpoint the exact events that caused my opinion of Edison to change.

My husband, James, started working at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station as a firewatch in 1983 when he was twenty-one years old. While working as a firewatch, he heard about a job opportunity to become an apprentice in the nuclear operations department. After passing a math and science proficiency test, undergoing a psychological exam, and a job interview; he was hired by Edison and started his training to become a reactor operator. My husband is a perfectionist, with an outgoing personality. In many ways he is the ideal type of person that you would want to have working at a nuclear power plant. If a procedure said to do the following steps, he would follow the procedure and do all the steps. If the rules for a particular area of the plant were that everyone needed to wear a hard hat, safety glasses, and hearing protection, he followed the rules. However, even though my husband has a mindset that is particularly suited towards working in a technical environment, he never had a philosophical allegiance to nuclear power as an industry. Working at SONGS was merely a job, a means of supporting himself and providing financial help to his mother and grand-mother. If a different job opportunity had presented itself at the same time, he could have just as readily built a career in a completely different industry. I believe that this is how life is for many people.

I was a nineteen year old college student when I met James in 1986. I did not know anything about nuclear power at the time. However, James was confident that everything he was learning about the plant systems and nuclear safety was correct, so it never occurred to me to doubt or question what Edison taught its own employees. The company had to comply with all the safe industry standards established by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), so everything must be accurate, I reasoned.

When James and I were married in 1989, I knew that he was well on his way to becoming a licensed nuclear reactor operator. In fact, he missed a week of Phase 3 training during our honeymoon and had to take a makeup exam. However, because he had not attended the lectures and only had the written materials to study, he did not get a high enough score to pass. This caused James a tremendous amount of stress; he prided himself on usually getting higher than 90%. Back then, training instructors would often falsely threaten students and tell them they would get fired if they ever failed to pass a test. Having some jerk for a training instructor, did not make learning nuclear fundamentals, and the various plant systems any easier. So even though I knew that I was marrying a reactor operator, I didn’t really know what life was truly going to be like with a man that worked a rotating shift at a nuclear power plant. Yet, it didn’t take long for me to discover how the rigors of my husband’s job were going to affect me.

            In the early years of our marriage there were two things that began to concern me about my husband’s job, and raised a red flag in my mind. The first concern I had was the level of stress I knew he experienced whenever he was in training. James was determined to do well on every written exam, and every control room simulator evaluation, and he could not relax until it was over, and he knew he had passed. The problem is that every fifth week was a week of training. The requirements for maintaining an active nuclear reactor operator’s license are extensive to say the least. Does your doctor go to training every five weeks in order to maintain his or her medical license? Does your accountant go to training every five weeks to keep their certification? Do we require our governors, senators, and congress members to take an annual exam on the Constitution in order to stay in office? No, because we usually assume that once an individual learns how to do their job, they remember how to do it, and we do not have to continue training and testing them every five weeks. If nuclear power is truly as safe as we have been told, then why does the industry require licensed nuclear reactor operators to endure such an obsessive compulsive training schedule? The regulations that govern commercial nuclear power are absolutely anal for a reason, it’s because the potential risks are so great.

The second thing that concerned me was the amount of required and forced overtime he worked. Right around the same time that my husband passed his license exam with the NRC, the operations department went to a 12 ½ hour rotating shift schedule. In many ways working a 12 ½ hour shift was easier on James, but it eventually had a destabilizing effect on me and our children. James’ regular work schedule was very challenging; every week for five weeks he worked a different combination of either 3 or 4, day shift or graveyard shift work days with a variety of days off in between. After five weeks the whole schedule repeated itself; which meant that he never had the same schedule two weeks in a row. On top of his regular schedule he worked an insane amount of over-time. I am not joking when I use the adjective “insane” to describe how much he worked. I am convinced that whoever created the work schedule for the operations department did it with a labor law handbook and a calculator. They sat down and figured out how many hours a week they could force a nuclear reactor operator to work, while paying them the least amount of money, and providing them with the least amount of benefits. Trust me; I am not exaggerating when I say this. 

The real insanity began when the reactors needed to be refueled. Typically the reactors are refueled every two years. The work control department would issue a standard refueling schedule of 45 days for each reactor; but there were always delays. During the years that my husband worked in operations; the refueling outages were often pushed out to 60, 75, and even 90 or 120 days. Because of the tremendous amount of work that needed to be done to shut down the reactor, remove the reactor vessel head, remove the used fuel to the spent fuel pool, put in the new fuel, re-bolt the reactor head in place, start up the reactor, etc. etc. there was always forced over-time. Often during these refueling outages my husband was forced to work six 12 ½ hours shifts in a row with only one day off each week which equals 75 work hours a week. After months of forced over-time we just wanted our regular life back.

The real turmoil of working in the operations department was caused by work environment attitudes, and professional peer pressure. In the early 1990’s Edison made a financial decision to limit the number of licensed operators on each crew to a bare minimum. For a ten year period between 1993 and 2003, no new operators went through license training. This information can be verified with the NRC. The result of this financial decision is that all the operators who had licenses to work in the Control Room worked a maximum amount of hours. The presumed reason behind this Edison corporate decision is that in the long run it would cost the company less if they called an operator into work on a short notice work assignment and paid them double time, travel time, and meal money than to hire additional workers and provide them with all the benefits that came with the job. This financial decision, no doubt, looked very good on an accounting spread sheet, but what the bean counters at the corporate office did not factor into their calculations is the human element. They did not factor in the physical and mental demands of working a 12 ½ hour shift in operations, nor any of the stress that came with the job. The truth is that working in the operations department is significantly more difficult than working a regular day job in a cubicle. Reactor operators tend to get sick and hurt more frequently because they truly do a job that is more demanding and dangerous, but this was rarely factored into the operation’s management policy. The work environment attitude was that a person was just an idiot and a loser if they got hurt on the job or called in sick. The unintended consequence is that people felt pressured to come to work when they were ill. People were also afraid to report injuries out of fear of getting in trouble or receiving a poor job appraisal. For the licensed operator in the Control Room, leaving shift early because of illness or an injury was a nightmare because someone usually had to be called in for a short notice work assignment to fill their watch. Getting vacation time was also a problem, especially during a refueling outage, even when a worker had seniority it was nearly impossible to take a day off. My husband missed so many family events during the years he worked in operations.

The event that changed my opinion of Edison happened in 1994 when my husband contracted spinal meningitis from working too many hours in a toxic environment; because of a special requirement for the air conditioning in the Control Room, 90% of the air supply is recirculated and only 10% is fresh air. James was 32 years old when he got sick. Typically, healthy people in their thirties do not get spinal meningitis; usually only individuals with fragile immune systems like babies, the elderly, and those who suffer from other chronic illnesses will get it. When my husband worked day shift he usually left our house around 4:40 a.m. while the kids and I were still asleep, so I never saw him before he left. He would arrive home around 7:30 p.m. after we had eaten dinner. When my husband came through the back door into the kitchen he looked horrible. I was shocked when I saw him because I had not seen him since the previous evening, and he appeared to be fine then. I took his temperature immediately and it was 102.5 degrees. His temperature probably would have been higher, but he had already taken some fever reducing medication. I was instantly angry, because I knew that he did not just develop a fever on the way home. He had been working in the Control Room with a fever. I asked him why he had not come home earlier, and he mumbled something about it being nearly the end of the shift before he really started to feel bad. I found it hard to believe that none of his co-workers noticed how sick he was. I think that he did not want to ask to go home because it meant that someone was going to have to be called in early, and that was going to create a problem for the Nuclear Operations Assistant (NOA). If James had gone to bed, missed a couple of days of work and gotten better, the whole incident would have just been forgotten in my mind. However, what really happened is my husband went to bed, and then around midnight he got up and called his doctor’s office and spoke to the on-call physician. Something in his brain told him, “You’re going to die if you don’t get to the hospital.” He drove himself to the emergency room because he did not want to get me and our children up in the middle of the night. While the doctor was giving him a spinal tap, so the lab could determine if his meningitis was viral or bacterial, he passed out, fell off the exam table onto the floor and hit his head. My husband stayed in the hospital for four days, and was off from work for a month. He really should have gone on short term medical leave for three months in order to fully recover. Yet, after three weeks, the NOA called to ask when he could return.  James felt pressured to go back to work, so he said he would come back the following week. He did not want it to appear like he was prolonging his illness. So what happened? They put him right back into the Control Room, when I knew that he was not completely better, and was actually going through withdrawals from all the pain medication he had taken during his recovery. Yet, no one in operations management seemed to think this was a problem just like they did not think it was a problem for him to be working in the Control Room with a fever. Honesty, integrity, and a sincere concern for the well-being of the worker has been lacking at SONGS for a long time. 

What happened to my husband probably should have turned into an NRC investigation. Allowing a very sick worker to stand watch in the Control Room is clearly a violation of safe operating standards. The problem is that back in 1994 no one was going to tattle on the company. The point is that a whole lot of misconduct can go on at a nuclear power plant without the NRC ever knowing about it. The fact that 59 safety allegations were filed with the NRC in 2010, and another 40 allegations were filed in 2011, and the bulk of them filed by employees, means that the people who work at San Onofre are fed up with Edison’s management. The workers at SONGS are desperately hoping the NRC will do something. 

            My point in sharing this story is to give you a small glimpse into the inner workings of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, and to let you know that the criticism and scrutiny that Edison is currently receiving is well deserved and way overdue. San Onofre’s poor performance record with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), and the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) has done more to condemn San Onofre than anything I could tell you. The facts truly speak for themselves. The amount of time and resources it would take to “fix” San Onofre, if that’s even possible, would be monumental in scope. I believe it is time for the people of California to follow Germany and Japan’s example and start the process of permanently shutting down SONGS, and moving forward with safe, reliable energy alternatives. The health and safety of the 8 million real people who live within the 50 mile radius of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station and the economic future of the great state of California should take precedence over Edison International’s bottom line.

Written by: Bethann Chambers – The wife of a Licensed Nuclear Reactor Operator at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), who was retaliated against for raising safety concerns.


San Onofre Code of Silence 

1.     San Onofre workers are often reluctant to file a safety allegation against the utility he /she works for because they do not want to lose their job, or future career opportunities; which means there is a powerful incentive to stay silent. 

2.       The Utility that runs San Onofre, Southern California Edison, is not going to complain about the cost of running a nuclear power plant, or the mountain of regulation they have to comply with because they want to maintain their license to operate. Therefore, the Utility stays silent about the dangers because they want to continue to pass the cost of generating electricity onto the ratepayer.

3.       The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is not an all-seeing agency that knows everything that is happening at every nuclear power plant in the country. Therefore, the NRC stays silent about the dangers of nuclear power to preserve their own jobs, because the Utility (SCE) pays to be inspected.

4.       Pro-nuclear organizations like the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), and the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) are not going to say that any particular nuclear facility is un-safe and needs to be shut down, because the more problems a utility has, the more advisors INPO and WANO can send to help solve the problem. Therefore, they have an incentive for staying silent as well, because the Utility (SCE) pays for INPO and WANO services.

5.       Who gets the rotten deal in this tangled alliance? The general public and the ratepayer. The people of southern California pay higher electricity prices to “feather the beds” of the Utility (SCE), NRC, INPO, and WANO, and in return their health and safety are at risk from a mismanaged nuclear facility. Nuclear power is only safe as long as the radiation and contamination is fully contained. As long as the containment structure and the plant systems are never compromised, then radiation exposure does not occur. There is no margin of error in nuclear power operations; everything has to be perfect or suddenly it becomes extremely dangerous.


cross posted from  “When did you start despising Southern California Edison?”

Environmental Groups Demand Answers

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 31^st, 2012

CONTACT: Gary Headrick, San Clemente Green – 949 412 3366; Gene Stone, ROSE, San Clemente – 949 233 7724

Decades-Long Seismic Risk at San Onofre           Exposes Failures of Edison & NRC –Environmental Groups Demand Answers

WASHINGTON, May 30 – For nearly three decades, more than 8 million people within 50 miles of the San Onofre nuclear plant have been living with a previously unknown and significant threat to the safety of their communities due to flawed safety equipment and lax oversight. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission revealed yesterday that emergency diesel generators, required to power the San Onofre nuclear plant in case electrical power is lost, risked being shut down following an earthquake – a problem only discovered two months ago.Local environmental organizations in Southern California have today sent a letter to the NRC demanding answers from both the commission and the nuclear plant operator, Southern California Edison. The letter was signed by Residents Organized for a Safe Environment, San Clemente Green and San Onofre Safety.org.

Southern Californians were stunned to learn that the NRC failed for three decades to examine the impact of an earthquake on the high frequency sensors in the reactors’ emergency backup generators. Edison informed the NRC on May 14 of the discovery that the possibility that a seismic event may cause sensors to shutdown the emergency diesel generators, and that this had not been considered during license assessments for the plant. The Edison document is available here.

Upon discovering the issue, the sensors were immediately turned off, indicating significant concerns regarding the threat these sensors posed to the safety of the reactors. This flaw could have triggered the shutdown of the backup generators following an earthquake. Coupled with an extended loss of offsite power, a valid concern in the earthquake-prone region, failure of the backup generators would cut off essential cooling to both the reactor cores and the spent fuel pools.

The failure of the emergency diesel generators at the Fukushima, Japan, nuclear plant in March 2011 led within a few hours to the start of the meltdown of the nuclear fuel in reactor core in unit 1.

“The failure of the NRC to examine earthquake impacts on critical safety equipment at San Onofre for three decades – a nuclear plant located next to major seismic fault lines – is completely unacceptable,” said Gary Headrick of San Clemente Green, “Community members deserve an explanation from the NRC for this safety failure.”

The San Onofre nuclear plant has been shut down since January following a steam generator tube rupture in Unit 3, which released radioactive steam, and the discovery of excessive wear in the tubes of both units. The steam generators in both operating units had been replaced less than two years ago.

Three technical studies commissioned by Friends of the Earth have detailed the major design changes that have led to the severe damage to the steam generators. <link to reports>. The NRC and Edison are due to report on the failures at San Onofre in the coming weeks.

The misleading information provided Edison regarding the steam generator replacements has raised significant concerns regarding the transparency and safety culture of the operators of San Onofre. The admission that essential emergency diesel generators at San Onofre could be switched off exactly when they are required following an earthquake further highlights the risks of continued operation of the crippled reactors.

“Within a matter of weeks the people of Southern California will be asked to trust the assurances of Edison that they can safely restart the San Onofre reactors. This latest revelation is one more reason why there is no trust in Edison claims and why the NRC is seen as a nuclear industry lapdog not capable of doing its job,” said Gene Stone of ROSE in San Clemente.

The Letter to the NRC: May 31, 2012

Chairman Gregory Jaczko
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington, D.C. 20555-0001

Dear Chairman,

We were stunned to learn recently that for nearly three decades the San Onofre nuclear reactors have been operating with inherently flawed backup emergency diesel generators, flaws that could have caused these generators to shut down as a result of a major earthquake. According to documents submitted to the NRC on May 14th of this year by Southern California Edison, the operator of the San Onofre plant, the affect of a major seismic event on the high frequency sensors that would trigger the shutdown of the backup generators had not been analysed. Upon discovering this issue, the sensors were immediately turned off, indicating significant safety concerns.

Allowing the San Onofre nuclear reactors, located directly next to major fault lines, to operate with such fundamental safety issue unexamined for three decades is a dramatic failure on the part of the Commission. The loss of both offsite and onsite power, or station blackout, is the very condition that led to the nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima-daiichi. As you are aware the seismic vulnerability of nuclear reactors has become an even more urgent issue in the aftermath of the Fukushima-daiichi accident. We are well aware of your particular concerns in this area. Tuesday’s news underscores the need for immediate and urgent action.

This critical safety flaw, only now revealed, posed an unacceptable risk to the 8 million people who live within 50 miles of the San Onofre nuclear plant and the untold numbers that would be affected by radioactive fallout from a catastrophic accident at this plant. We are writing today to demand a public explanation from the NRC as to how the Commission could fail so drastically to fulfil its responsibility to our families, our communities, and the citizens of this country to ensure the safety of San Onofre.

This critical problem with the emergency backup generators, and the astounding amount of time before the issue came to light, is but one example of the perfunctory oversight and pervasive lack of safety culture within the NRC and the nuclear industry.

The San Onofre nuclear reactors have been offline for four months due to the rupture of tubes in the recently replaced steam generators. Southern California Edison presented this as a like-for-like replacement, and the Commission rubber-stamped the licensing. Had the NRC examined these replacement steam generators, it would have uncovered significant modifications of the original design that led to their failure and the release of radioactive steam less than two years after installation.

This lack of adequate oversight not only poses a threat to our communities, but has come at a cost of $670.8 million. We, as ratepayers, have been forced to foot the bill for these critically-flawed steam generators. Although Southern California Edison also shares in the responsibility to adequately maintain and evaluate the safety of the San Onofre plant, it is your responsibility to hold them accountable.

We are deeply concerned about the lack of transparency and disregard for safety on the part of Southern California Edison and that the NRC has failed in its responsibility to ensure the safety of San Onofre. We find it unacceptable that we have been living with this unknown threat for decades.

We look forward to your timely response to our concerns.

Yours sincerely,

Gene Stone
Founder ROSE
Residents Organized for a Safe Environment.

Donna Gilmore
Communications director
San Onofre Safety

Gary Headrick,
Founder
San Clemente Green

Activist from Japan Ms. Chieko Shiina to visit CA.

Ms. Chieko Shiina

ROSE is once again joining with No Nukes Action Committee, Peace Resource Center of SD and other groups who will bring one of the top anti-nuclear activists in Japan to the U.S. this summer for a 10 day trip across CA to help us in our effort to shutdown C's two nuclear reactors. She will be stopping in several cities to share her story with us. She will stop in San Clemente & SD.

ROSE & PEACE RESOURCE CENTER OF SD will donate $500 each to this effort. If you would like to match one or both of these first two donations please contact me asap. Any amount will be appreciated and very helpful.

Umi Hagitani will act as interpreter and driver. So we will need one plane ticket, car rental and gas, food money and either money for motels or a place for them to stay. I will let everyone know the dates when they are firmed up.

Inviting Ms. Chieko Shiina will be the next crucial step to advance this already established international coalition into California-state or even national level organizing because she is one of the most powerful organizers from Fukushima. Being a youth activist in famers' and students' organizing for land issues and fight against US-Japan Peace treaty, she is an experienced activist who understands the mechanism and the legacy of nuclear renaissance in relation to multinational militaries in the context of East Asian politics. She was a dedicated organic farmer in Kawamata village of Fukushima before March 11th. Since Kawamata is in 40 miles radius of Fukushima Daiichi, the whole village was recommended to evacuate, and the place is still a no-go zone. She became anti-nukes organizer since then, touring commngunities all over Japan to help support local organizing against nukes. One of her major contributions to Japan's national anti-nukes organizing is that she organized the sit-in in front of the Ministry of Economy and Industry from September 11th, 2011. Further, she organized 100 women from Fukushima to set up "Women's 10 months and 10 days sit-in" from late October, which later became both a symbolic and physical space where women from all over Japan came to communicate and organize. Her previous experience in organizing in different issues also helped making coalition among anti-base, anti-poverty, pro-labor, pro-farmer resistance. This sit-in is also now known as Occupy Kasumigaseki, Tokyo, which Occupy Berkeley group made alliance with. Given that, she will be a good support for organizing against nuclear weapons in California, and a bridge to connect the emerging coalition between anti-nukes struggle and occupy movement.