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Unit 3 of the San Onofre nuclear generating station remains shut down today after a leaking steam generator tube was discovered this week. On Tuesday Southern California Edison, the nuclear station’s operator, announced it shut down unit 3 as a precautionary measure. Since then the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has been criticized for lax regulation of nuclear plants in the US, said the amount of radioactive gas that leaked from the pinhole sized opening in the tube was, “very, very small, minuscule, almost undetectable.” Through Edison’s website, a senior executive on Wednesday cheered his company’s response to the leak, saying, “[o]ur 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.” In contrast to the numerous leaks found at aging nuclear facilities around the US, the leak at San Onofre comes from new equipment, installed only two years ago as part of a $674 million steam generator upgrade completed in 2010. The OC Register reports that a recent Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspection of Unit 2 at San Onofre found that the walls of 69 tubes had thinned more than 20%, and even more showed thinning of the walls at greater than 10%. Questions about the rapid deterioration of the costly equipment are being raised. Edison is currently under fire in California for skirting public utility regulations. The California Public Utilities Commission investigated Edison after it left hundreds of thousands of LA area residents without power for days following a powerful windstorm at the end of last year. The Commission found that Edison overloaded utility poles and that guy wires didn’t meet safety regulations, complicating efforts to restore power.

GUEST: Rochelle Becker, Co-founder and Executive Director of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility

Visit www.a4nr.org for more information.