IRVINE – A small group of activists rallied outside a Southern California Edison building Wednesday afternoon to call for the permanent closure of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.
The power plant has been off for more than three months due to safety concerns with its steam generators, in which hundreds of tubes that carry radioactive water have been damaged by unexpected vibration and friction. Investigators are trying to figure out the cause.
The dozen or so protesters carried signs and banners with slogans including:
“Shut down or melt down.”
“No nukes now.”
“Not clean. Not cheap. Not safe.”
“One earthquake away from a really bad day.”
Among the activists out there on Bake Parkway in Irvine were Beverly Kaneko and her son, Ryan, who lived in Japan last year when an earthquake and tsunami caused equipment failures, nuclear meltdowns and release of radioactive materials at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.
Kaneko’s husband still lives in Japan, where he owns a business, but she and her son live in Huntington Beach to protect their boy from contaminated water, food and air in their home country.
“On so many levels, it is really frightening,” she said.
Protester Gene Stone, founder of Residents Organized for a Safe Environment, says the main issue is safety for all.
“We don’t want our families to be put in the same position as Fukishima and Chernobyl,” he said.
Chernobyl refers to a nuclear power plant disaster in Ukraine in 1986.
Stone contends Edison produces enough electricity to meet its customers’ needs without the San Onofre plant and that only reason for the agency to reopen San Onofre would be for profit concerns.
Protestor Gary Headrick, a San Clemente resident, said he wants the plant to be decommissioned, the nuclear waste placed into storage where its is safe from for the public and to move the public toward safe, sustainable energy solutions.
Edison, which operates the San Onofre power plant, says it is working toward meeting federal benchmarks that could open the way for a restart of at least one of the reactors, perhaps in time to meet summer power demand. The plant can produce enough electricity for 1.4 million homes.
On Tuesday, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., asked Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko for documentation on how the federal agency reviewed a series of modifications to the generators, which might be the culprit in the mechanical trouble.
At issue is whether Edison sidestepped federal requirements by conducting extensive design changes, a claim leveled by an environmental group that said the alterations are at the heart of the plant’s problems.
A 13-page report issued by Friends of the Earth, a group critical of the nuclear industry, warned that running the plant at reduced power would not resolve problems with badly worn tubing.
Earlier this month, Edison announced a tentative plan to restart and run the seaside reactors at lower power for several months because engineers believe that will ease the vibration that could be eroding tubes.
The four generators at San Onofre each have nearly 10,000 alloy tubes that carry radioactive water.
The generators function something like a car radiator, which controls heat in a vehicle’s engine. The generator tubes circulate hot, radioactive water from the reactors, which heats a bath of nonradioactive water surrounding them. That makes steam, which is used to turn turbines to make electricity.
The tubes represent a critical safety barrier – if a tube breaks, there is the potential that radioactivity can escape into the atmosphere.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission said there is no timetable to restart the reactors, which were replaced in 2009 and 2010 in a $670 million overhaul.
State officials have warned of possible power shortages in the region this summer while the plant remains dark.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
