San Onofre dead, it will take millenia to bury body by SIGNYM

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San Onofre dead, it will take millenia to bury body

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Friday, June 14, 2013 05:04
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Friday, June 14, 2013 4:49 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

The good news is that San Onofre is dead.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jun/11/local/la-me-san-onofre-2013061
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The decision was not imposed on it by the NRC (as it should have been) but was made by Edison managment in the face of stiff local opposition to re-opening and lower natural gas prices. But the fault for the problems at San Onofre lie squarely in the hands of Edison managment.

You may recall that there were tubes in the power plant that wore down very quickly after only 10 months of use, which leaked radionuclides into the community. The word used universally to describe the holes was "mysterious". You can hardly find a headline that DOESN'T use that word, because Edison used it first, over and over, in their press releases.

But as it turns out, Edison knew EXACTLY why the tubes wore out: They had replaced a steam generator 10 months earlier, in which the tubes were an integral part. Rather than putting in a like for like replacement, as Edison had informed the NRC, they installed a wholly redesigned unit, which removed a central support column and added about 4% more tubes. The (badly calculated) redesign had the effect of causing a LOT of vibration... so much that the tubes- which are 20 feet tall and 1/4 in from each other- started banging into each other and into the tube stays. The vibrations were so bad that the tubes could be heard banging into each other by the "loose parts pickup" (microphone) from the day the reactor powered back up. There was no mystery at all what the problem was.

It was a hugely expensive mistake. Edison could not afford to replace the steam generator, so they played innocent. Deny, delay, and obfuscate. Southern Cal Edison was willing to push forward operating a reactor they KNEW was already worn out... worn out to the point of developing holes... from a design flaw that was never going to be fixed.

WHAT did they think was going to happen?? The radioactively contaminated water in those tubes is at 2200 psi and very very hot. Once it's release (by a hole, for example) it turns to high pressure steam. Now, high pressure steam is a great cutting tool, and one leak could cut into the next tube and THAT tube could cut into the next tube after that, in pretty short order. A whole bunch of tubes could have been cut in a rapid (hours or days) domino effect, not only leaking radionuclides immediately, but compromising the reactor coolant levels. It could have Fukushima'd. Playing with fire, much?

The sad thing is, the NRC was cool with all that even after they'd found out they'd been duped. What forced So Cal Ed to make a decision is that residents had gotten a court order to force a public hearing on restarting the reactor. And just a few days ago, a series of internal Edison memos revealed that they were worried about the redesign causing excessive vibration and wear, and that they decided not to share those concerns with the NRC.

By the skin of our teeth, we're sometimes saved from ourselves.

If you're interested, here is a great video demonstration of what a "steam generator" is, and the problems with San Onofre, by my favorite nuclear engineer, Arnie Gundersen

http://fairewinds.org/media/fairewinds-videos/san-onofre-bad-vibration
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Friday, June 14, 2013 5:04 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

The bad news is that it usually takes decades to decommission nuclear power plants. The option that most operator choose is to let the nuclear materials decay over a decade or so, and then dry-cask them in place. However, since the nuclear material remains radioactive for millenia, the dry casks have a history of only a few decades, and without a permanent repository for high-level nuclear waste, this is obviously a problem in search of a solution. Of course, this is one of the problems that nuclear power poses that other sources of energy don't.

NRC factsheet on decommissioning
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/decommission
ing.html

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