• San Onofre nuclear plant generator might have been tampered with, utility says

    Mike Blake / Reuters

    The San Onofre nuclear power plant lies along the coast between Los Angeles and San Diego.

    By NBC News staff and wire reports

    Security has been beefed up at the San Onofre nuclear power plant in Southern California after it was discovered that a generator there might have been tampered with, the plant operator said. The plant has been out of service since January due to a leak in a steam generator.

    Southern California Edison said it discovered engine coolant in an oil system in the backup diesel generator in late October during routine monitoring. An internal probe found evidence of potential tampering, though it could not be confirmed.

    The presence of coolant posed no safety risk, the company said.


    The news is the latest blow to San Onofre's majority owner, which earlier this month said the cost of the prolonged outage at the damaged nuclear power plant has topped $317 million. San Onofre's Unit 2 and Unit 3 reactors have been shut down since January after operators discovered a leak in a steam generator tube in Unit 3.

    Technicians later found excessive wear on hundreds of tubes in units 3 and 2, which had been taken offline earlier for maintenance.

    The problems center on damage to alloy tubing in four steam generators that were installed during a $670 million overhaul in 2009 and 2010.

    A three-month federal probe blamed a botched computer analysis for generator design flaws that ultimately resulted in excessive wear to the tubes.

    Last month, Edison asked federal regulators for permission to restart the Unit 2 reactor and run it at reduced power.

    The utility and the NRC scheduled a public meeting on the issue Friday in Southern California.

    However, an NRC decision is not expected for months.

    The investigation into the potential tampering is ongoing, the utility said, adding that it has enhanced security at the nuclear power plant that sits on the coast about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. 

    The company informed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of the issue on Oct. 30 and told the agency of the potential tampering on Nov. 27.

    NRC officials were not immediately available for comment.

    Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • Three Mile Island nuclear reactor shuts down unexpectedly

    Jonathan Ernst / Reuters File

    Three Mile Island's steam towers are visible for miles around the nuclear plant, which is located 12 miles south of Harrisburg, Pa.

    By NBC News and wire servicees

    A reactor at Three Mile Island, the site of the nation’s worst nuclear accident, shut down unexpectedly on Thursday afternoon when a coolant pump tripped and steam was released, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told NBC News.


    The system tripped when "the pump stopped operating and created a power/flow imbalance," said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan.

    The plant responded as designed and is stable with no impact on public health or safety, added NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci. 

    If any radiation was in the released steam, Screnci said, it would be below detectable levels.

    Exelon, the plant operator, said in a statement that "during the shutdown, steam was released into the atmosphere, creating a loud noise heard by nearby residents."

    A NRC inspector based at the plant "responded to the control room immediately after the reactor trip to independently assess control room operators' response to the event and ensure safety systems were functioning as designed," Sheehan said. "He did not identify any immediate concerns with operator or equipment performance."

    Plant operators were not yet sure what caused the problem.

    "Once the reactor is sufficiently cooled down, plant personnel will be able to access the containment building and troubleshoot the problem," Sheehan added.

    March 28, 1979: NBC's David Brinkley, Gerald Harrington, Steve Delaney and Carole Simpson report on the Three Mile Island accident.

    Located about 12 miles south of Harrisburg, Pa., Three Mile Island in 1979 saw a partial meltdown of one of its nuclear reactor cores. Small amounts of radiation were released into the environment when the reactor core lost cooling water, exposing the highly radioactive fuel rods. 

    A presidential commission later said the accident was "the result of a series of human, institutional and mechanical failures."

    Several thousand people claimed they had suffered ill health effects from radiation, but their lawsuit was rejected by a federal court in 1996 with the judge concluding they had not proved their case.

    Various assessments by the government and nuclear industry have concluded no radiation-related deaths or illnesses resulted from the accident.

    NBC's Anne Thompson and Tom Costello, as well as The Associated Press, contributed to this report.

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  • Greenpeace 'bombs' French nuclear reactor -- could it happen in US?

    By Miguel Llanos, NBC News

    A paragliding Greenpeace activist who dropped a smoke bomb over a French nuclear reactor on Wednesday added a new element to the presidential race there -- and raised the question of whether the same, or worse, could happen at a U.S. nuclear reactor.


    "At no moment was the safety of the installations at risk," said the plant's operator, French utility giant EDF, adding that the pilot was arrested by security staff at the Bugey nuclear plant in southeast France.

    EDF acknowledged that a second activist was arrested at another nuclear site in southwest France after entering via a truck gate and hiding for an hour in brush within the "surveillance zone," Reuters reported.

    Greenpeace said it was raising awareness of nuclear power issues ahead of France's presidential elections on Sunday.

    It "illustrates the vulnerability of French nuclear to the threat of air attack," Greenpeace France spokeswoman Sophia Majnoni d'Intignano said in a statement. "While Germany took into account the aircraft crash in its safety testing, France still refuses to analyze this risk for our plants."

    France, which gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, pledged special safety tests at its 58 reactors after Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011.

    Those tests include standing up to floods, earthquakes, power outages and cooling system failures -- but not terrorist attacks or even a plane crash.

    So could a paraglider attack happen in the U.S. -- or would it be shot down before even getting to a nuclear site?

    "Completely speculative," Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, told msnbc.com. "Our facilities are extremely well-defended. Let's leave it at that."

    Over at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that says it's neither for nor against nuclear power, two nuclear experts said that while a reactor's containment dome would be hard to penetrate other targets are available.

    The intake structure, where water is brought in to cool the reactor fuel, "is an easier target," Dave Lochbaum told msnbc.com. Without coolant, that fuel could cause a meltdown.

    The aerial threat exists, added Edwin Lyman, because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission "decided in 2007 to exclude any kind of aerial attack from the 'design basis threat' -- that is, the set of attacks that reactor operators must provide protection to defend against.

    "So the NRC doesn't require that nuclear plants have means to detect or defend against intrusions from the air," he added. "And the federal government also does not require 'no fly zones' around nuclear plants that could be enforced by the military."

    Kerekes countered by noting that an independent study in 2002 found that U.S. nuclear containment structures can withstand even a crash from a commercial airliner.

    As for paragliders, Lochbaum said a more likely scenario is where one or more are used at night in an attempt to get into a nuclear plant.

    "While nuclear plant security perimeter fences are well lit, the lighting is to allow security officers to catch anyone trying to climb over, cut through, or tunnel under the fences," he said. "The lights and the camera angles might not readily show someone flying in. That someone could be carrying sufficient weapons to cause problems."

    At that point, Lochbaum said, "it becomes a race -- can the intruder access area(s) needed to sabotage the plant before the security officers intervene?"

    Japan wants Fukushima residents to bury radiated soil in their own backyards, but how dangerous is the dirt and where should it go? NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel reports.

    Nuclear plants already test such scenarios, and Lochbaum said "the good guys sometimes lose the race" in testing -- even with the six weeks notice given by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

    "Typically, the force-on-force tests are conducted once every three years at each U.S. nuclear plant," he said. "A test may consist of four exercises -- different entry points and different targets. It would be useful to periodically throw in a glider or parachute entry to make sure the security officers practice handling such threats, too."

    Nuclear power debate in France includes Libya project

    Back in France, the stunt certainly got attention -- but not all of it flattering for Greenpeace.

    "The main consequence of this stupid action will be to prevent any air recreation within more areas of France," posted one person on Greenpeace's main blog on the stunt.

    An anonymous post on another Greenpeace blog criticized the stunt, saying a paraglider couldn't carry enough explosives to damage nuclear containment areas. 

    "You've also missed the point," the writer added, "that someone could cause far graver damage by carrying out a similar attack on the Olympic Stadium in London later in the year."

    Reuters contributed to this report.

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  • US licenses first nuclear reactors since 1978

    Southern Company

    The bottom of the containment vessel for a new reactor at the Vogtle plant in Georgia is seen under construction on Jan. 30. The Southern Company on Thursday got its license for the reactor and a second one going in at the existing nuclear site.

    By Miguel Llanos, NBC News

    Updated at 6 p.m. ET: It's been 34 years -- and several nuclear accidents later -- but a divided federal panel on Thursday licensed a utility to build nuclear reactors in the U.S. for the first time since 1978.

    The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's chairman, Gregory Jaczko, opposed licensing the two reactors at this time even though he had earlier praised their design.

    "There is still more work" to be done to ensure that lessons learned from Japan's Fukushima disaster last year are engrained in the reactor design, he told his colleagues. "I cannot support this licensing as if Fukushima never happened. I believe it requires some type of binding commitment that the Fukushima enhancements that are currently projected and currently planned to be made would be made before the operation of the facility."

    "There is no amnesia," responded Commissioner Kristine Svinick, speaking for the 4-1 majority and noting that the industry has been directed to adopt those lessons.

    The licensing covers two reactors estimated to cost $14 billion that the Southern Company wants to add to its existing Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia. Preliminary work has already begun and plans are for the first new reactor to be operating in 2016.

    "The project is on track, and our targets related to cost and schedule are achievable," Southern CEO Thomas Fanning said in a statement.

    Fanning declined to say why Southern would not agree to include language in the new license to complete potential Fukushima modifications before the reactors come online as Jaczko suggested.

    "There will be issues (from the Fukushima review) that apply to the U.S. nuclear fleet, but they apply much more closely to the current fleet, not this newest generation of nuclear technology," Reuters quoted Fanning as saying.

    The Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that says it wants to improve nuclear safety not end nuclear power, sided with Jaczko. "The chairman has done the right thing," UCS senior scientist Edwin Lyman told msnbc.com. "It makes no sense to rush into constructing any new reactor before the implications of Fukushima are fully understood and incorporated into NRC regulations."

    The Obama administration has stated its support for nuclear power and the industry believes a "nuclear renaissance" is in the making.

    "This is a historic day," Nuclear Energy Institute President Marvin Fertel said in a statement. "Today’s licensing action sounds a clarion call to the world that the United States recognizes the importance of expanding nuclear energy as a key component of a low-carbon energy future that is central to job creation, diversity of electricity supply and energy security."

    But cheap natural gas is making nuclear less competitive, and Fukushima undermined public confidence, similar to what happened following the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.

    The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has taken steps to improve safety at the 104 reactors across the U.S. In particular, better defenses against earthquakes, floods and fires are in the works after Fukushima.

    Next-gen nuclear plants could provide carbon-free energy, but the painfully slow process of approving better, safer reactors — not to mention real anxiety over meltdowns and waste — threaten to derail projects before they can be built.

    Following the Sept. 11 attacks, the NRC also required nuclear operators to show that their reactors' shield buildings could withstand large airplane collisions.

    The industry says improved reactor designs have significantly reduced plant sizes and the number of moving parts, thus reducing the risk of a disaster.

    "The design provides enhanced safety margins through use of simplified, inherent, passive, or other innovative safety and security functions," NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said when the agency approved Southern's reactor design on Dec. 22.

    US OKs reactor design

    Southern's project in Georgia has received $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees. Essentially, taxpayers are assuring private capital that their investment will be protected if the borrower, in this case a utility, defaults.

    The nuclear reactor design used by the Southern Co. in the project approved Thursday is the same as that used at this plant being built in Sanmen, China.

    Approval should encourage other projects in the pipeline. Utilities in Florida and the Carolinas are moving towards seeking approval.

    Nuclear power provides about 20 percent of all electricity in the U.S.

    Worldwide, more than 60 reactors are being built, including more than two dozen in China alone.

    The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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  • 'Extremely small' radiation release at Calif. plant possible, utility says

    Mike Blake / Reuters

    The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station sits on the shore of the Pacific Ocean in San Diego County, Calif.

    By msnbc.com staff and news services

    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.

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  • Nuclear renaissance? US OKs new reactor design

    This site in Sanmen, China, will house a Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactor and is set to go online in 2013. China is building four AP1000s, and U.S. regulators on Thursday gave the green light for use here.

    By Miguel Llanos, NBC News

    Opening the door to a new generation of nuclear reactors, federal regulators on Thursday approved a design that a nuclear watchdog group acknowledged is an improvement but still not ideal.

    The AP1000 reactor, designed by Westinghouse Electric Co., is safer than the current generation of U.S. reactors, which date back 30 years or more, members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in voting for approval.

    "The design provides enhanced safety margins through use of simplified, inherent, passive, or other innovative safety and security functions, and also has been assessed to ensure it could withstand damage from an aircraft impact without significant release of radioactive materials," NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said in a statement.

    Fears of an aircraft impact were heightened after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

    The Nuclear Energy Institute praised the approval. NEI's chief nuclear officer, Tony Pietrangelo, called it "an important step closer to the construction and operation of advanced-design reactors that can strengthen America’s energy security while producing large amounts of affordable electricity to help drive economic growth."

    westinghousenuclear.com

    Westinghouse uses this chart to showcase the AP1000's simpler design compared to traditional reactors.

    Key features of the AP1000 are its fewer moving parts than in traditional reactors, especially in an emergency where radioactive fuel needs to be cooled. Current systems rely on pumps to supply water, but the AP1000 uses a massive water tank atop its structure that uses gravity to release the coolant.

    Utilities in Georgia and South Carolina are seeking approval to build four AP1000 reactors, which Westinghouse touts with a trademarked campaign: "The Nuclear Renaissance Starts Here." China is among its earliest buyers, with four AP1000s being built there now.

    No nuclear reactors have been built in the U.S. since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident and talk in recent years of a renaissance was dealt a setback with Japan's Fukushima disaster last March.

    The Obama administration, which has offered the project in Georgia $8.3 billion in loan guarantees, is "committed to restarting America’s nuclear industry -- creating thousands of  jobs in the years ahead and powering our nation’s homes and businesses with domestic, low-carbon energy," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Thursday in praising the approval. He said it "marks an important milestone towards constructing the first U.S. nuclear reactors in three decades."

    Nuclear energy does have an advantage over fossil fuels in that it does not emit the greenhouse gas carbon, but it faces stiff price competition from natural gas, which is much cleaner than oil and has dropped dramatically in price. Moreover, building a nuclear reactor is much more expensive and takes much longer than a power plant fueled by natural gas. 

    The Union of Concerned Scientists, which says it is not against nuclear power in principle, said in an earlier analysis of the AP1000 that its simplified design "is far less vulnerable than existing reactors to a total loss of AC power" during an accident. "As a result, risk assessments by the designers find that the probability that these reactors will experience a severe accident is much lower. For example, these analyses show that the probability of a core meltdown is 100 times lower than that for today’s plants.

    But the group added that "little experience with full-scale reactors operating at full power is available to validate computer models of these safety systems, producing significant uncertainties."

    It also faulted the AP1000 for "less robust containment systems, less redundancy in safety systems, and fewer safety-grade structures, systems, and components."

    Population on rise around US nuclear reactors

    Westinghouse, in its statement announcing the approval, touted the safety features and noted that lessons from Fukushima were factored in.

    "The innovative passive safety design was recognized by the NRC as providing significant added capability that allows the plant to safely cope with a Fukushima-type event, a significant reason why the NRC Near-term Task Force Review of Insights from the Fukushima-Daiichi Accident recommended" approval, it stated.

    More safety features in new nuclear designs

    UCS senior scientist Edwin Lyman told msnbc.com that the recommendation does not constitute a formal re-analysis "to identify and correct any vulnerabilities based on lessons learned from the Fukushima accident."  

    "It would be more efficient and cost-effective to address problems that could be corrected at the design stage now, before any new plants are constructed," he added. "After plants are built, any new safety requirements would have to be addressed through costly retrofits and additional dependence on operator actions."

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  • Crocodiles thrive as neighbors of Florida nuclear plant

    The Associated Press reports from HOMESTEAD, Florida:

    An unexpected but fruitful relationship has blossomed between two potent forces in the swamps of South Florida: the American crocodile and a nuclear power plant.

    Wilfredo Lee / AP

    A wildlife biologist holds a small crocodile that will be released into one of the cooling canals adjacent to the Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant during a nighttime crocodile survey in Homestead, Fla., on Nov. 28, 2011.

    The reptile has made it off the endangered species list thanks in part to 168 miles of manmade cooling canals surrounding Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant in the southeastern corner of the Florida peninsula. It turns out that Florida Power and Light was building prime croc habitat just as virtually every other developer was paving it over.

    Federal wildlife officials give the state's largest public utility part of the credit for a five-fold increase in the species' population in Florida. There are only two other sanctuaries for the crocodiles, which are still considered threatened.

    Wilfredo Lee / AP

    Wildlife biologist Rafael Crespo measures a small crocodile captured in a cooling canal adjacent to the nuclear plant on Nov. 28, 2011.

    Wilfredo Lee / AP

    Wildlife biologists Michael Cherkiss, left, and Joseph Wasilewski weigh a small crocodile that they captured in a cooling canal adjacent to the nuclear plant on Nov. 28, 2011.

    "The way the cooling canal system was designed actually turned out to be pretty good for crocodile nesting," said John Wrublik, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "It wasn't designed for crocodiles, but they've done a very good job of maintaining that area."

    Hundreds of crocodiles, as long as 15 feet and as heavy as one ton, roam the swampland surrounding the power plant. They're monitored by wildlife biologists hired by the utility, who sometimes need quick reflexes to keep all their fingers. Continue reading.

    Wilfredo Lee / AP

    Wildlife biologists on an airboat head out on a cooling canal adjacent to the nuclear plant during a nighttime crocodile survey on Nov. 28, 2011.

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