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Mike Blake / Reuters
The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station sits on the shore of the Pacific Ocean in San Diego County, Calif.
Updated at 9:25 p.m. ET: In a statement Wednesday evening, Southern California Edison said it was still working on plans for repair of the leak in a steam generator tube that had prompted the shutdown of a reactor in the San Onofre nuclear plant. The statement said that monitoring instruments showed no change in radiation levels that would be detectable outside the plant.
The statement said operators shut down the plant Tuesday "and isolated the component that contained the leaking tube within four hours of detecting the indications."
More from the statement:
Currently, operators are cooling down Unit 3 and reducing pressure in the plant, which is the method to stop the tube from leaking. They are meticulously following prescribed procedures written specifically for addressing a tube leak condition.
"There was no threat then, nor is there now any danger to the public or to plant workers," said Pete Dietrich, senior vice president and Chief Nuclear Officer for Southern California Edison.
"Our operators performed exactly as they are trained to perform and took prompt action to ensure we did not create a situation involving any challenge to the health and safety of the public," Dietrich said.
Original post: An "extremely small" amount of radiation could have escaped into the atmosphere from a Southern California nuclear power plant after a water leak prompted operators to shut down the reactor, a utility spokesman said Wednesday.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Victor Dricks echoed that, saying a small amount of radioactive gas "could have" escaped the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station on the northern San Diego Coast.
Southern California Edison spokesman Gil Alexander said the amount would have been "extremely small" and possibly not detectable by monitors.
The company and federal regulators say the release would not have posed a safety risk for the public.
A reactor at the plant was shut down Tuesday night after a possible leak was detected in one of the unit's steam generator tubes.
Southern California Edison on Tuesday said in a statement that "a precautionary shutdown of Unit 3" at the electricity generating plant was under way, but that there had been no release of radiation to the atmosphere and there was no danger to employees or the public.
The San Onofre plant is on the Pacific Ocean coast near San Clemente north of San Diego. It consists of two units, No. 2 and No. 3. No. 1 was shut down permanently in 1992. It is one of two nuclear plants that generate electricity in Southern California; the other is the Diablo Canyon plant in San Luis Obispo County.
Unit No. 2 at San Onofre was already offline for maintenance and refueling, but Southern California Edison said the shutdown of No. 3 would not affect the supply of electricity to customers.
In September, the failure of a major tranmission line between Arizona and California caused the Onofre reactors to go offline automatically.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
More content from msnbc.com and NBC News
Leave a Comment:
nuclear power is still the safest there is. i wouldn't hesitate to live near one. people who believe otherwise ignore the number of people killed in oil refinery disasters and spills every year.
"An "extremely small" amount of radiation could have escaped into the atmosphere from a Southern California nuclear power plant after a water leak prompted operators to shut down the reactor, a utility spokesman said Wednesday."
So you say Homer Simpson works there, eh?
No. The safest are passive collectors, such as solar wind and tidal. These sources have a very low risk of any kind of deadly accidents and they don't generate deadly waste that needs centuries of monitoring.
People who believe otherwise just don't have good critical reasoning skills.
The first report out by the utility was just a "conservative shutdown".
Now it's a "possible small amount of radiation leakage".
If a utility claims something to be white, automatically assume it's black.
@Patrook
Solar is so inefficient and expensive the return on investment is non-existent and wind is too intermittent to be trusted. Tidal is an impossibility here in flyover country.
Put up enough solar panels to do the job and the shade will prevent anything from growing underneath them--say corn, rice, beans, etc.
Atomic waste is an issue, but you folks don't seem to want to burn coal, dam the rivers or split the atom. "Good critical reasoning skills" and a little research will tell you that America (and the world) demands electricity and with the technology we have today--coal, gas, oil, hydo and atomic--we must depend on them for power out computers so we can get on the boards and complain about the energy policy.
So, unless you are working on a matter/antimatter engine in your mother's basement, turn off the polluting electricity and sit in the dark with with a pencil and paper and post your treatises around town like the days before electricity.
My mother wont let me play with antimatter anymore :(
If you look at the public hearings when the plant was going through the approval process though, you will find the company to say repeatedly that this type of accident would never happen. Anyone to say otherwise, is full of crap!
That's funny, because Germany isn't having any difficulty at all getting more than17 percent of their power from those sources... by the way, solar prices have dropped by more than 50% since 2006. These days, for around $5000 homeowners can install rooftop solar pv grid tie systems that can completely eliminate their electric bill... a system like that used to cost 30,000 to 50,000 dollars.
Thats right Z1ppy. Solar prices are declining and performance is improving.
People with Jim's attitude think that just applying more antiquated, expensive and dangerous status quo technologies will solve our energy problems. I disagree.
America can lead the way in solar power with nanotechnologies and ceramic-membrane batteries. We just have to get the haters out of the way. Turns out that's tough....
If it was not detectable, it would have been so little as to be harmless. These detectors are very sensitive and can pickup variations as small as the luminous dials on old watches. I'm sure most people expose themselves to more radiation than that from microwaves and cell phones everyday. Sounds like another sensationalist headline.
While most people will read into this article as "NUCLEAR POWA IS UNSAFE ZOMG" I read into it as "safeguards yet again working as intended".
Do we still have the ban on the building of new nuke plants?
I think that was lifted, but no one wants to invest the money because of the NIMBY people
There isn't an official ban, it's just that none have actually been approved for over 30 years. There are a number of people petitioning to build them today, with the financial backing to do so, but the far left eco-warriors are still trying to block them.
I'd generally consider myself to be an "eco-warrior" (not the most extreme), but I'd rather have Nukes than Coal, and from what I have been reading modern nukes are cheaper anyway.
What about that facility in Nevada(?) for the waste storage, was that ever completed?
Yucca Mountain was abandoned, they are looking for a new site
wow a non story on a non event that may or may not have happened
The story, such as it is, lies in the fact that there's apparently a change in the claim, from yesterday, that the plant released no radiation, vs. today's statement that a "little bit of radiation" may have been released.
This:
Southern California Edison on Tuesday said in a statement that "a precautionary shutdown of Unit 3" at the electricity generating plant was under way, but that there had been no release of radiation to the atmosphere and there was no danger to employees or the public.
to this:
An "extremely small" amount of radiation could have escaped into the atmosphere from a Southern California nuclear power plant after a water leak prompted operators to shut down the reactor, a utility spokesman said Wednesday.
Let's hope that's the end of this particular nuclear power plant story.
the plant was not required to shut down according to another msnbc article. the operators did so out of good faith and with the publics best interest at heart. it is near impossible to track that minute amountof material. the steam tubes rupture from time to time, it is an event which operators are well aware of and experienced with. i would challenge any other industry including the chemical industry with being able to track all materials and side affects as well as the nuclear industry does.
Funny, though, that change in claim from "none" yesterday, to "maybe a little bit" today.
And that added to the "little bit" released at the plant in Illinois yesterday. Added to the "little bit" of radiation released from the Palisades plant in Michigan a few months ago (if that's all the recent ones, I may have missed a few). Added to the radiation still coming from Fukushima.
0.3% of our background radiation comes from ALL of the weapons testing the world has ever done. are you suggesting this non incident is going to even make even the most minute difference in what humans experience every day? i KNOW you get more radiation from eating two bananas every year then you can get by living next to a power plant for a year. google it
I'm saying that apparently the plant thought it was important enough to change from a definitive "no radiation" released yesterday, to stating that "maybe a little" was released, today.
Meanwhile, we are supposed to become complacent about these radiation releases? Gosh, three in the States in the past few months alone, at least. Apparently they're not supposed to be happening.
Ruken, remember your post when those nuke plants melt down and I'm sitting here in West" By GOD" Virginia staying warm/cool with the lights on due to our coal fired power plants!
Nobody said anything about complacency, that was your take, many people simply wish to show how it is not rational to worry about this minute amount when you look at the overall background radiation sources as I defined earlier.
Split wood..not atoms. You can put out a fire..but you can't get the atomic genie back into the bottle once it has escaped. End nuclear "experiments". We already know it kills...
Fires kill more people every year than have ever been killed by nuclear technology in the entirety of human history. Fires at coal-fired power plants in the US kill more people every year than nuclear accidents have ever killed in the US total.
Nuclear is the safest power source available today, and if we used modern reactor technology rather than relying on the tools from 30 years ago (when the last reactor in the US was built), we wouldn't have our current problem with nuclear waste. We can recycle it these days. We just need reactors that are capable of such.
What planet do you live on?
I'd say he lives on Earth... http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
What fantasy land do you live in?
Z1P2
Great source, many people don't know about that and refuse to believe it when they see it. It does bring a great perspective to the nuclear debate though.
Worked out quite well in Japan.
The tsunami and earthquake are what did the bulk of the damage. The radiation released by the reactor was an insult added to the injury, and that after two of the largest disasters in the areas history, at the same time, AND the failure ultimately came down to the backup for the backup for the backup not having the right kind of plug.
If there were no nukes in Japan, the only leak would have been fly ash, not radioactivity...
If there were no nukes in Japan, Tokyo would look like Beijing.
I presume you mean about all the smog and high cancer rates from all the smog curtesy of all their coal power, and not the buildings themselves... since Beijing is quite the modern city now.
yes that would be correct, the image link is posted in the comment.
Sorry my bad eyesight missed the green underlining there.
I see the word " possibly" in this article ? Extremely small amount maybe ,"could have" , but not detectable ? hmm ? Which is it ?
It's anti-nuke people trying to scare you by taking a very minimalist report out of context.
Radiation is all around us. BFD
So is idiocy...
Duck and Cover!
in other news the methane cows are producing daily presents a larger threat to humanity due to methanes affects on global warming
Get those OWS nut job no goodniks after the nuke industry!! They'll make a difference!
#Occupyareactorcore
Those that believe nuclear power plants are both clean and inexpensive know NOTHING about nuclear power. After the plant is up and running it seams cheap and clean... how do you suppose they clean and prepare the uranium for the reactors? Large processing plants take hydrochloric acid to process and concentrate the mineral; once the process is complete the millions of gallons of radioactive acid cannot be disposed of, is then just stored in plastic lined pools (nice thought), oh and the carbon created by these plants is forgotten when they tell people how clean it is. The health affects from the mining is well documented as are the costs... The costs of decommissioning a nuclear power plant is far greater than building one, this expense is always (not usually) left to the taxpayers at the end of the stations life and after the investors made their millions, also left is the thousands years of storing the radioactive waste... Id far rather burn coal, technology exists to burn coal cleanly and inexpensively, its the activists that are sponsored by overseas interests that keep us developing our own resources.
there is no such thing as clean coal. that term was an invention of the coal industry. there is cleaner coal but not clean coal. almost all nuclear waste can be recycled. france does it all of the time. there is so much potential in nuclear. who cares about hydrochloric acid? how do you think that gold for your necklace or ring was mined? with cyanide. ceramic tiles contain detectable levels of radiation. nuclear energy is NOT dangerous in the slightest. at the height of three mile island, it was still within safe limits. what about the costs of oil spills? coal fires? global pollution? we pay for that stuff eventually. nuclear energy is the energy of the future
5 million gallons per day of fresh water, typically from the city water supply, is consumed at one single silicon plant making parts for solar panels. It is ultra-purified and used for rinsing the hydrofluoric acid off the silicon wafers. Hydrofluoric acid is the only acid that will eat through a glass tank and attacks bones. Nuclear waste can be mixed with moltened glass and stored miles underground with no chance of contaminating water.
TWO WORDS Chernobyl and Fukishima. All this sounds good since you dont live within the limits of these countries. Bottom Line @!$%# happens. Its easy to sit on a blog and praise nuclear power until you happen to be one of the victims. Before you praise Nuclear power google some pictures of the children damaged and poisoned by Chernobyl and Fukishima and then look at your own child and ask yourself WHAT IF IT WAS ME !
It's easy to knock nuclear power when you're not the one dieing from black lung disease courtesy of the coal industry. Nuclear power has the lowest deaths per terrawatt hour of energy produced than any other source of energy. Source: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
commonsense
Big words, Chernobyl was horrible, but there have been no noticeable effects at Fukushima, Read This.
Your claim that people have been affected(medically due to radiation) THUS far at Fukushima is false on every level.
No one pro nuclear or not will defend what happened at Chernobyl because it was indeed a horrible accident caused by a shoddy reactor design and a stupid experiment being conducted by the Russians. The advancement of reactors can be seen in the difference between the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents affects on the public. Read the above article.
SMALL NUCLEAR ACCIDENT IN CALIFORNIA, everybody becomes normal News at 10:00
Mutations in baby births include: two eyes, one mouth, two arms, two legs, 10 fingers and 10 toes.
Gruesome to even consider!
Notice people,,the entire story is built around a "Possibility" and nothing other than that..and how many of you have fallen for it already.... You people are so easy,,,,MSNBC just made a lot of money on your naivety from "Hits"...Lol's
Whats the big deal... we have been breathing Obama's exhaust for 2 years and were not dead.... yet
Shut them all down like Japan in doing. There's no such thing as a safe level of radiation exposure. Even a chest x-ray increases your chance of lung cancer.
and you think coal is better cancer wise?
Nanci Pelosi has been leaking toxic fumes for many years- and we are still here. Whats a difference is a little radiation going to matter?
By msnbc.com staff and news services,
Who at msnbc.com staff wrote, edited and contributed to this article? And which news services?
Non yesterday, but Perhaps a lil-bit today, might have escaped? <> KEY word = "perhaps-mebbe".
Aha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha & sum more too yet then. Do you sposen there are there ANY Fools out there that believe 1 word of it?
NUKE energy, ... yesssireeebillybobbythornton says jus go fer it again. Why let 3 MILE ISLAND, >>> CHERNOBLE & JAPAN have alla thaa gorey-GLORY. Why ANY FOOL kin see thizz is superior to Coal, Wind & Solar. OMG. (Time for a REEEEE-ALITY chekkk-up in DC DOE) CZARS/etc.
Godzilla watch now commencing!
I wouldn't believe a corporation of this sort anymore if they told me night is dark and day is light. On the other hand it is of course possible that they are telling the truth. When you add that a government agency is backing them upon it, that makes the possibility that they are being honest almost zero because the way I figure it, Large energies companies are lying about 75 to 80% of the time when they speak and the federal government is lying 100% of the time when it speaks so my thought is that the leak is sizeable but perhaps not anything catastrophic as if it were, the government might admit that there was some sustantial leakage so that the people didn't burn them at the stake later when the truth came out.
If they say it's "small" it's not, Corporate profits might be at stake! Lie to the public! Get every one of of those spokespeolpe in rad suits and make them fix their problem. Then close that hazadous plant. Hold plant executives personally reponsible for their endangering of the public.
These reactors are too old, in 20 years all of the existing reactors in the US will be 40 years old. The lifespan of a reactor is typically 30 years. I don't trust the nuclear energy commission, they are not enforcing all recommendations. So they don't always know if a nuclear power plant is following the recommendations it makes. In this age of cutting back government regulations, this is an issue. I'm not an expert on this topic but this is the part that puts up a red flag for me.
Nuclear reactors may produce "clean" energy, but they leave behind a mess. Case in point is the Hanford reactor at Richland, Wash. When it was closed, they left behind a mess which they are still cleaning up. The nuclear waste there is seeping out of its storage containers and into the nearby Snake River.
Most of the Anti comments here are spot on! They have lied too many times for us to trust them, let alone start believing in what they say. All of this was not suppose to happen, completely safe, and low cost. The mess it makes before, during, and after is unacceptable and as one commenter has said, "...this expense is always (not usually) left to the taxpayers at the end of the stations life and after the investors made their millions..."
A few more details about the incident:
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_19868953
While the leak wasn't large enough to require the plant to declare an emergency, any possible leak of radiation into the atmosphere is rare. Also concerning was that "many" tubes that carry pressurized radioactive water were damaged, according to a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The tubes are part of equipment that is virtually new, having been installed in 2010.
"The damage that they have found to many other tubes is unusual, and they are attempting to identify the reason," NRC spokesman Victor Dricks said.
Hey dummies, we live on a radioactive planet. Where do you think this stuff comes from? Get a education and get over yourself. Granted, being a luddite is a lot easier- all you have to do is parrot some kneejerk crap and you're in.
If you paid attention, you would find the place actually scarier than all of this made up bull sh*t. The best part is that there is not a damn thing you can do about it. The primary cause of death is birth.
BE VERY AFRAID
Since we now know that the Japanese Government lied to it's people what makes you all think we are getting the whole truth?
San Onofre is down and yet we still have plenty of power. Tell me again why we are risking our lives, the environment and the future of California and beyond for energy we obviously can live without? If this or the next leak turns out to be a meltdown, it will bankrupt California and damage one of the major food supplies for the entire country. Californians, sign the California Nuclear Initiative petition to shut down California's two nuke plants Time is of the essence. Please do it now!
According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant has the worst safety record of all nuclear power plants in the entire USA -- 10 times worse. And employees are punished for reporting safety violations to the NRC. See reports of safety allegations (complaints) from those who are in a position to know the problems. To learn the facts about this and other related issues, go to
The NRC lowers safety standards to keep old nuclear plants running. And the other regulatory agencies and elected officials have been ineffective in resolving the problems.
And now, the NRC, in essence, has given up finding a solution for the radioactive waste with their current proposal to store the waste at the nuclear plants for centuries. The two nuclear plants in California (San Onofre and Diablo Canyon) together produce over 1000 pounds a day of highly radioactive nuclear waste when running at 100%.
The meltdown from Fukushima in Japan is still happening and the radiation has reached the United States and beyond. If California doesn't want to become Fukushima USA, it's time to act now. It's not worth the risk. It's up to us. No one else is going to do it.