San Onofre nuclear power plant prohibited from restarting

[kristopher]

San Onofre nuclear power plant prohibited from restarting
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission lays out steps that Southern California Edison must take before the troubled San Onofre plant will be allowed to come back on line.
By Abby Sewell, Los Angeles Times
March 28, 2012


The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, citing serious concerns about equipment failures at the San Onofre nuclear power plant, has prohibited Southern California Edison from restarting the plant until the problems are thoroughly understood and fixed.

The plant has been shut down for two months, the longest in San Onofre's history, after a tube leak in one of the plant's steam generators released a small amount of radioactive steam. Since then, unusual wear has been found on hundreds of tubes that carry radioactive water.

Neither regulators nor Edison have said when they believe the plant will reopen. San Onofre is a major supplier of power for Southern California, producing about 2,200 megawatts of power, or enough electricity to serve 1.4 million households. It is Southern California's only nuclear power plant.

State officials are already working on contingency plans to avoid power outages during the summer months if the plant remains out of commission. They are considering transmission upgrades, bringing back retired generating units at a natural gas plant in Huntington Beach and launching new conservation efforts, including flex-alerts to encourage customers to use less energy.

Until now, the cause of the tube problems had been a mystery....

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0328-san-onofre-20120328,0,1692312.story

[madokie]

1. Jesus Christ on a trailer hitch

Are they actually wanting to restart the plant with the potential for a catastrophe like those vibrating, rubbing tubes with abnormal wear indicates? Do they have no shame

[RobertEarl]

2. So

Without this plant cranking, there is enough electricity to go around.
It is down and no one is dieing........

Now when summer comes, they are afraid there won't be enough amps to cool folks down. Summer, when the sun is sending all that heat to us.

It's too bad we don't have a way of capturing some of that free-heat and using its energy to do things like making electricity and hot water.

I guess if we hadn't blown our wad on nukes, we would have enough $$ to furnish everyone with some sort of system that captured all that sunlight?

NASA can do it, why can't we?



tag>>>>truth+sarcasm//