San Onofre design choices led to nuclear plant shutdown

An executive with the company that manufactured faulty equipment that led to the shutdown of the San Onofre nuclear plant defended decisions made in the design of the replacement steam generators.

The company made choices in designing support structures at San Onofre that were intended to prevent one type of vibration, but ended up creating another type of vibration that ultimately led to the plant's closure, said Frank Gillespie, senior vice president with Mitsubishi Nuclear Energy Systems.

The problematic vibration, he said, had not been seen at any other plant before, although it had been observed in experimental conditions.

That vibration led to excessive wear on the tubes, particularly in the plant's Unit 3, where one tube sprang a leak and released a small amount of radioactive steam on Jan. 31, 2012, and eight tubes failed pressure tests.

The nuclear facility has been closed for more than a year.

Mitsubushi discussed the design process in a proprietary report that was made public in a redacted form earlier this month.

Gillespie said designers working on the new system in 2005 put "paramount focus" on controlling vibration and reducing wear. In the process, they added more anti-vibration bars, but made other changes that led to less contact between the bars and tubes.

In Unit 3 in particular, the bars were flatter, leading to about half the amount of pressure between bars and tubes as in Unit 2, the plant's other working reactor unit, which also saw an unusual but less severe amount of wear.

“What they didn’t understand at the time is, some of the steps ... actually made in plane [vibration] worse,” Gillespie said. "...There was an underappreciation for the fact that the pressure of the bars against the tubes actually performed a very important function."

Anti-nuclear activists and some lawmakers -- notably, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)  -- have accused Mitsubishi and plant operator Southern California Edison of being aware of defects in the equipment's design prior to installation and failing to make modifications that might have prevented the problem in order to avoid going through a potentially lengthy license amendment process.

Mitsubishi's root cause report did show that some changes were rejected in part because they would have required a license amendment. The changes were intended to reduce the dryness of the steam flowing around the tubes, which ended up being a factor in the problematic vibration.

Power plant explosion rocks Long Beach neighborhood

An explosion rocked a Long Beach neighborhood Wednesday morning when a steam pipe ruptured at a nearby power plant.

At about 7:44 a.m., a 5-inch pipe carrying high pressure steam to a boiler at the AES Alamitos plant in south Long Beach near Pacific Coast Highway failed, blasting a plume of steam into the morning air. The blast could be heard up to a mile away, according to local media reports.

“We always strive to be a good neighbor and are sensitive to the impact the noise may have had on the community,” said AES Southland President Eric Pendergraft in a statement. “We responded as quickly as possible to shut down the facility and minimize the impact.”

It took workers about 45 minutes to take the pipe out of service.

The AES Alamitos plan provides enough natural gas power to light about 2 million homes, according to company officials.

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SoCal Edison to pay $4 million to woman injured by stray currents

A jury has granted $4 million to a woman who alleged she was injured by stray electrical currents running through her Redondo Beach home that sits next to a Southern California Edison substation, her attorneys said Tuesday.

Simona Wilson discovered the current when she felt it on her shower head, according to her attorneys. In a three-week jury trial, she claimed stray voltage at the home she shared with her three children caused nerve damage that developed into a condition called erythromelalgia.

Her attorneys said evidence showed that Edison had previously owned Wilson’s home on Knob Hill Avenue, and had received complaints from tenants as early as the 1980s that they were getting shocked. Edison did not disclose the history when they sold the home, according to Wilson’s attorneys, Lars C. Johnson and Brian Hong.

Edison representatives said in a statement that it presented "considerable engineering and other testimony during the trial that refuted the claims made by Wilson."

In its verdict Monday, the panel unanimously found that Edison had caused a nuisance at Wilson’s home, voted 10 to 2 in finding Edison negligent, and 9 to 3 for punitive damages, according to Wilson's attorneys. Jurors awarded $1,050,000 for Wilson’s injuries and $3 million in punitive damages, they said.

Edison said it was "disappointed" by the verdict and said the decision was "inconsistent with the totality of the evidence presented at trial." Edison "believes its response to the concerns raised by Wilson regarding her home located near SCE’s Topaz Substation and its efforts to address those concerns were appropriate," representatives said in the statement.

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San Onofre reactor unit could safely be fired up at full power, Edison says

Southern California Edison submitted an analysis to federal regulators showing that one of the two reactor units at the shuttered San Onofre nuclear plant could operate safely at full power for almost a year.

The plant has been shuttered since a steam generator tube in the plant's Unit 3 sprung a small leak on Jan. 31, 2012, releasing a small amount of radioactive steam.

The incident led to the discovery that thousands of tubes in the recently replaced steam generators in both units of the nuclear plant were showing signs of wear.

Eight tubes in Unit 3 failed pressure tests, meaning they could have ruptured under some circumstances.

Unit 2 showed less wear overall and less of a particularly unusual type of wear caused by tubes banging against adjacent tubes. Officials attributed the difference between the two units to slight manufacturing differences in the support structures. 

Edison has proposed to restart that unit at 70% power for five months, saying that running at reduced power would alleviate the conditions that led to the tube wear.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is still reviewing the restart proposal, asked Edison to show proof that the unit could operate at its full licensed power without danger of a tube rupture, leading many observers to speculate that the agency might require Edison to obtain a license amendment to run at 70% power.

The company previously argued that technical specifications governing tube integrity required it to demonstrate safety at the power level the plant would be operating at -- 70% in this case -- not the full power allowed under the plant's license.

That assertion drew an outcry from activists, led by the environmental group Friends of the Earth, who have been pushing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to require a license amendment -- which could require public hearings and substantially delay the restart process -- before making a decision on the restart proposal. 

Southern California earthquake points to danger of fault line

This post has been corrected. See the note below.

Some might believe that the 4.7 magnitude Riverside County temblor that rattled windows and swayed skyscrapers across Southern California on Monday morning released tension from the San Jacinto fault, thereby avoiding danger of a larger earthquake.

But according to a study published in January in the journal Nature, conventional wisdom is wrong.

A pair of researchers, one from Caltech and the other from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, concluded that stick-slip faults similar to the San Jacinto fault that ruptured Monday aren’t limited to frequent, smaller temblors.

The authors pointed to the 2011 Fukushima earthquake in Japan. That quake, a 9.0, was born from a stick-slip fault that unexpectedly ruptured with devastating consequences.

Before that disaster, seismologists believed earthquake faults that experienced “creep,” or small, gradual movement throughout the year, had little chance of massive ruptures. The San Jacinto fault, Hutton said Tuesday, is one of those creeping faults.

“It does have frequent, small earthquakes but it does have big ones every now and then,” she said. “It doesn’t make it any safer.”

The San Jacinto fault is similar, with tectonic plates that slide horizontally against each other. Monday’s tremor was the biggest in three years and was felt across a wider swath than typical West Coast earthquakes, Susan Hough of the U.S. Geological Survey told the Los Angeles Times on Monday.

Scientists said the finding is forcing seismologists to rethink faults worldwide. A quake from San Francisco to San Diego along the San Andreas fault now seems more plausible, the study’s authors wrote.

For the Record, 3:52 p.m. March 12: An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified Susan Hough as Sarah Hough.

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Image: San Jacinto fault zone. Credit: USGS

Garcetti unloads oil lease tied to Beverly Hills drilling

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti, who has the Sierra Club’s backing in his race against City Controller Wendy Greuel, has cut his ties to an oil-drilling operation at Beverly Hills High School.

The Times reported last week that the city councilman had signed a lease in 1998 that granted Venoco Inc. drilling rights to a retail property he co-owns through a personal trust.

In a document dated Tuesday, when Garcetti finished first in the mayoral primary, he assigned his interest in the lease to family friend John Stillman, a Newport Beach attorney. No money changed hands, Stillman said.

The 20-year Venoco agreement promised Garcetti and several relatives a share of earnings from any oil or gas that the company extracts by slant drilling under the Wilshire Boulevard property from the high school about a half-mile away.

The high school wells have been the target of some alumni, residents and environmentalists who claim the drilling has produced dangerous emissions of benzene. Venoco insists the wells are safe.

Garcetti's campaign said last week that he had no memory of signing the lease and noted that Venoco had yet to take any oil or gas from the property, the site of a hair salon that pays him and the relatives rent. He also said that he would donate any future drilling royalties from Venoco to the Sierra Club.

Voters consider ballot measures in Redondo Beach and Carson

 

While the contests at Los Angeles City Hall drew much of the spotlight in Tuesday’s election, 29 other cities throughout Los Angeles County held municipal votes of their own.

Voters in Redondo Beach and Carson will decide controversial ballot measures -- one aimed at shutting down a power plant and the other at ousting Carson's longtime mayor.

Redondo Beach residents will vote on Measure A, which would rezone the 50-acre site of the gas-fired AES Redondo Beach plant and would require it to shut down by the end of 2020.

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Plant owner AES had been planning to construct a new plant on the site to comply with new state regulations on the use of ocean water for cooling.

If Measure A passes, the California Energy Commission could still choose to permit a new plant, but proponents of the measure say the commission is unlikely to overrule local zoning decisions.

The measure would require that 60% to 70% of the land be converted to parks or open space and would allow commercial development on the rest of it.

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Proponents of the measure say the new plant would pollute more, because despite being more efficient, it would run more often, and that other uses of the land -- like an upscale hotel -- would bring in more revenue to the city.

"We don't want a new power plant on our water front for another 50 years," said Councilman Bill Brand, a co-author of the measure and the only sitting council member who supports it. Brand said AES pays about $400,000 in taxes a year to the city, but that new commercial developments could bring in 10 times as much.

L.A. Votes: Greuel and her allies step up attacks

With just days to go before voters make their choice for mayor, one of the presumed front-runners, Wendy Greuel, and her allies launched a multi-pronged attack against her rivals, signaling that the city controller may be in a more precarious spot than she expected going into the March 5 primary.

Greuel ramped up her attacks on chief rival Eric Garcetti, alleging that his family’s financial connection to a controversial oil drilling operation has endangered children and raised questions about his environmental credentials. Garcetti responded that his family’s property has never and will never be used to extract oil, that the attack smacked of desperation, and highlighted Greuel’s donations from oil and gas interests.

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In a further sign that Greuel is under pressure, the independent effort backing her bid released on Thursday a television attack ad against Garcetti, as well as a negative radio spot aimed at Jan Perry, who some believe is making inroads into Greuel’s support with her aggressive mail campaign.

Kevin James sought to underscore the city’s pension liabilities, saying he is the only candidate in the mayoral race with the independence to deal with it. And his campaign called for the release of communications between Greuel, her chief strategist and the head of the union that is the primary backer of the independent committee that has spent $1.7 million to date to support her bid.

To boost his long-shot mayoral run, Emanuel Pleitez is literally running across the city, in sneakers and baby-blue athletic shorts.

It’s Friday. Time for more financial reports from candidates. Check out www.latimes.com later Friday night to see the details from the last financial disclosure reports before election day.

-- Seema Mehta

Comments, questions or tips on city elections? Tweet me at @LATSeema

Photo: Candidate for Los Angeles mayor Wendy Greuel participates in a mayoral debate at the Cal State Los Angeles' Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs. The debate was moderated by ABC7's Marc Brown. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

San Onofre: Edison, regulators at odds over restart plan?

Southern California Edison may be at odds with federal regulators over what it means to run the San Onofre nuclear plant at full power.

Edison officials met with U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staffers Wednesday to discuss the agency's technical questions on a proposal by Edison to restart one reactor at the shuttered plant and run it at 70% power for five months before taking it back offline for more inspections.

The company argued that running the reactor at reduced power will alleviate the conditions that led to unusual wear on steam generator tubes carrying radioactive water.

The plant has been out of service for more than a year after one of the tubes in the plant's Unit 3 leaked a small amount of radioactive steam.

The NRC has asked Edison to show that Unit 2 -- the unit proposed for restart and which showed less tube damage -- could be run at the full power level allowed under its license without danger of tube rupture.

Activists have contended that if Edison fails to prove there is no risk then it should be required to apply for a license amendment to run at 70% power.

In a response submitted Monday, Edison argued that 70% power is, in fact, "normal steady state full power."

The company said that the "clear purpose" of the technical specification governing tube integrity is "to ensure that the … tubes will retain their integrity over the range of operating conditions to which they will be subjected. In this case, that range is limited to 70% power."

Art Howell, who heads an NRC panel focused on San Onofre, told Edison officials Wednesday that "Your position on the technical specification is different than staff's position that was communicated to you on Jan. 29."

Edison also promised to provide an analysis by March 15 showing that the unit can safely operate at 100% power. Edison Vice President of Engineering Tom Palmisano told the NRC staff, "We think it's appropriately conservative to operate at reduced power" and continue to collect data.

Activists expressed outrage at Edison's response to the NRC request.

"With all due respect, it reads to me like a schoolboy's justification for why they couldn't complete a homework assignment," said Kendra Ulrich, a nuclear campaigner with the environmental group Friends of the Earth, which has been pushing the NRC to require a license amendment.

Ulrich said Edison was "asserting they understand the regulations better than the regulators themselves."

NRC staff have said they will make a decision on Edison's restart proposal no earlier than late April.

In its quarterly earnings report Tuesday, Southern California Edison's parent company, Edison International, disclosed that the plant's outage has cost the company more than $400 million to date for repairs, inspections and replacement power.

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Photo: Children play in the surf and a man fishes with the nuclear power plant looming in the distance. Credit: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times

Cost for troubled San Onofre plant? $400 million and growing

The parent company of Southern California Edison, operator of the troubled San Onofre nuclear plant, reported Tuesday that the costs of the yearlong outage at the plant had ballooned to more than $400 million as of the end of 2012.

The hefty price tag includes inspections, repairs and purchasing replacement power.

Edison International officials fielded questions from analysts about the plant’s extended shutdown and the possibility that federal regulators will require the plant to go through a lengthy license amendment process before returning to service.

They also took some shots at elected officials who have accused Edison of knowingly installing defective equipment at the plant.

The plant has been out of service since last January because of unexpected wear on tubes in the plant's steam generators.

Edison has proposed restarting the less-damaged of the plant's two units and operating it at 70% power, which the company argued would alleviate the conditions that led to the wear. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is still reviewing the proposal.

Edison indicated Tuesday that the company has looked into what repairs could be done to restore both units to full power, and was told by the steam generator manufacturer, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, that the job of replacing a "significant portion" of the system could take more than five years to complete. 

The report also heralded a potentially protracted dispute between the two companies. Mitsubishi's warranty on the equipment limited payouts to $138 million, of which the company has paid out $45 million to date. Edison is contending that the warranty cap should not apply because of unusual circumstances at San Onofre -- Mitsubishi disagrees.

Edison Chief Executive Ted Craver said the company "bristles" at allegations made publicly by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) that the company was aware of design flaws in the steam generators and did not make fixes in order to avoid triggering a license amendment.