Citation issued for now-closed San Onofre nuclear plant

[bananas]

Source: Associated Press

Nuclear safety regulators have cited the operator of the San Onofre power plant for failing to check the design of steam generators that led to the plant's closure.

The U-T San Diego ( http://bit.ly/1cS1RtT ) reports the citation from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission did not carry explicit penalties, but it could complicate financial recovery efforts by Southern California Edison.

The utility has 30 days to appeal the NRC's violation notice.

The plant between San Diego and Los Angeles was shut down in January 2012, after a small radiation leak led to the discovery of unusual damage to hundreds of virtually new tubes that carry radioactive water.

Edison earlier this year said would shutter the plant permanently.

Read more: http://www.cbs8.com/story/24306775/regulators-cite-now-closed-san-onofre-nuke-plant

[bananas]

1. NRC: SAN ONOFRE OPERATOR VIOLATED RULES

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/dec/25/tp-nrc-san-onofre-operator-violated-rules/

NRC: SAN ONOFRE OPERATOR VIOLATED RULES
No penalties for Edison; financial recovery efforts could be complicated
By Morgan Lee12:01 a.m.Dec. 25, 2013

<snip>

The violation notice has the potential to undermine Edison’s assertions before the state utilities commission that it acted prudently and made no specific mistakes, said Matthew Freedman, attorney for The Utility Reform Network, a San Francisco-based consumer advocacy group.

“Edison is arguing with every fiber of their being that they are the victims and did nothing wrong,” Freedman said. “This kind of contradicts their version of events.

“If they are found to be imprudent, then there are a whole host of costs that can be disallowed. That’s the trigger for a billion-plus dollars of pain for them.”

<snip>

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. What about all the nuclear material at the now closed reactor?

It still poses a problem in the event of damaging quake, yes?

[AtheistCrusader]

4. Not on the level of Fukushima.

Keeping the spent fuel pools stocked with water after the quake in Japan would have been trivial, if not for the direct radioactive material venting from the operating reactors that SCRAM'd and melted through the RPV's. But no one could really get in there, what with the hydrogen explosions, and high radiation, so the pools were neglected and boiled away.

Now that SONGS is offline, a few fire trucks could pump enough water to keep those pools from boiling. There's risk, but miniscule compared to a spent pool sitting in the reactor building of an operational reactor, where a reactor could make the environment so inhospitable that people can't maintain the spent pool.

[NNadir]

3. There will be, by contrast, no fines issued against the replacement power generation facilities

for the people that are killed by them.

According to Lancet, more 6 million people on average between 1990 and 2010 have been dying every year from air pollution.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)61766-8/abstract

This works out to about 700 people per hour. Maybe some uneducated anti-nuke will seek to share with us how many people died from the entire history of operations from San Onofre. As many as will die from dangerous fossil fuel waste in the next hour? The next ten minutes?

No where in the lancet survey ocauthored by a multitude of health scientists from a broad array of countries around the world, is nuclear energy identified as a significant risk. It doesn't even appear on the radar.

And yet...and yet...anti-nukes cheer continuously at a tragedy of their own authorship, the death of six million people per year.

Many of these deaths were needless, and might have been avoided were it not for the fear and ignorance of legalistic anti-nukes.

The closure of San Onofre has lead to increases in the dumping of dangerous fossil fuel waste - untreated waste - directly into humanity's favorite waste dump.

Meanwhile, as has been pointed out by the world's leading climate scientist, nuclear power, despite assaults by the fearful and the ignorant, saved 1.84 million lives, and prevented the release of about two years worth (at current rates) of dangerous fossil fuel waste dumping.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3051197

Predictably, the anti-nuke community, which doesn't give a rat's ass about the deaths and destruction caused by dangerous fossil fuel waste, is unimpressed, as they have spent their lives holding science and scientists in contempt.