I will present here a short summary of the talks at the luncheon of The Newkirk Center for Science and Society at UC Irvine on October 16, 2012 on the topic “How Safe is Nuclear Power: Implications for San Onofre”.
The first talk was by Prof. William Parker, past chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He talked on the comparative safety of the energy sectors of coal, natural gas, nuclear, and renewables including hydro power. I hope he makes his slides and graphs available. In terms of deaths per unit of energy, coal was worse, natural gas second, then nuclear and then renewables, with factors of two separating them. This didn’t include evacuations for nuclear, resettling for dam building, destroyed landscape for coal, or deaths from early dam building. It did include deaths from fossil fuel pollution. He did compare living in Denver which has about double the background radiation (6 mSv) versus Southern California (3 mSv) because of the type of rock in the area. Also, much of the Fukushima area evacuated still had less radiation than living in Denver.
Next, Daniel Hirsch, lecturer on nuclear policy at UC Santa Cruz and president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, spoke on the particular mechanics of the heat exchanger pipes in the reactors at San Onofre, and showed how many more pipes were affected in the new heat exchangers, in both Units 2 and 3, than at any other reactors. He also showed the large number of worker complaints versus other reactors. Also, considering the lack of a disposal method for used nuclear fuel, he said that it was immoral for our generation to leave this problem as a possible risk to future generations for the next half million years (hey, I’m only reporting here). He said the problem with Yucca mountain was not just political, but physical in terms of water leaks in the mountain. He also said that the reason that San Onofre wanted to restart unit 2 was to deliver some power and keep the ratepayers paying for the plant upkeep. If the plant doesn’t restart soon, the plant upkeep would have to be covered by S. C. Edison. He said that he was worried about many tubes breaking together, and leaking radioactive water to the outside of the containment vessel. Since the plants are already 28 years old, extending their life would be like throwing good money after bad.
Then, Mark Nelson from the San Onofre plant (SONGS) talked, and I took notes on this since we don’t often hear from the plant. He said first that we got through the last summer with the two units shut down by conservation, by it being a mild summer (it didn’t seem like one, its still 90 degrees today), by restarting two natural gas generators at the Huntington Beach plant, and by some complexities in load sharing that I missed while taking notes. The Huntington Beach plants won’t be of use next summer (they are only 450 megawatts).
Mr. Nelson, Edison’s director of generation planning and strategy, said that tube to tube wear in unit 3 was new. The previously described pinhole leak was actually 50 gallons a day. The pipes are suffering from “fluid elastic instability” which is that the steam is moving four times faster than planned for. The steam is also too dry, since steam that deposited water on the pipes would make them heavier and damp down vibrations. The solution is to slow down the steam, and their calculations are that that could be accomplished by running unit 2 at 70% for a five month test. Tubes in unit 3 did not have support over their straight length. Unit 2, with the first heat exchangers built, had wider and flatter tubes than unit 3, and these were better supported. Unit 3 exchangers may need repairs. He said there were two license amendments filed while doing repairs. To the charge about fire watches being faked, there were fire watches every two hours by alternating people, so the ones every four hours were still valid. In terms of cost, they are exploring compensation from warranties and insurance.
Finally, Larry Agran spoke, who is a past Mayor of Irvine and City Council member, and a candidate for Mayor in this election. He mostly repeated his March 27 remarks, which I had examined critically in a post around that time. He called for decommissioning now, rather than in 2022. He called the whole nuclear industry alarming and depressing, and estimated the probability of a nuclear accident over the 40 year lifetime of a reactor as one in a hundred. (This is a very simple estimate to make, since the US has 104 reactors and one meltdown.) He is still confused that a magnitude 8 on the San Andreas fault is like a magnitude 8 by the time it gets to San Onofre. He claimed that plant would not be able to survive a tsunami. He is concerned about the stored waste, and about evacuating 10 million people in a 50 mile radius (although the plant only anticipates a 5 or 10 mile evacuation radius). He claims that at Fukushima now there are 100 mile distant areas of alienation and that Irvine would have to leave everything behind for hundreds of years. He again incorrectly stated that solar power from the Mohave would be 8500 megaWatts, which is four times that of San Onofre (which is 2200 megaWatts). (Since solar power only has a capacity factor of 1/5, that amount of solar on average would only provide 1700 megaWatts, and I think the total is too large also.) He said that local families spending a few hundred dollars to get rid of the plant would be worth it.
A more official account of the session by Pat Brennan of the Orange County Register is found at the UCI School of Physical Sciences website.
All in all a very interesting two hour session, with nobody giving an inch or increasing their understanding of the whole situation, except of course the audience.
