Nuclear Power Plants

Nuclear power has been called a Faustian bargain. Science promises society inexhaustible energy. In exchange, society must guarantee eternal stability. In Eastern Europe and in the erstwhile Soviet Union, society has broken the deal, and there is hell to pay. Nuclear power requires social stability because, as the United States had occasion to learn after the Three Mile Island accident, the smooth functioning of a nuclear power plant requires an unbroken supply of top-quality, low-tech hardware.

On Jan. 31, alarms alerted the control room at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station that a radiation leak was occurring in one of the nearly 39,000 tubes that carry radioactive water in the steam generators. That failure led to an unparalleled shutdown of one of California's two nuclear power plants and triggered more than three months of detective work by Southern California Edison officials and federal nuclear regulators that has yet to determine the problem's root cause or when San Onofre will reopen.

A coalition of opposition parties won a close vote in Parliament, removing nuclear power plants from Denmark's future energy plans. Anti-nuclear activists watching from the galleries shouted in jubilation after Friday's vote. Social Democrats, the Radical Left and two other left-wing parties narrowly outvoted the center-right government coalition.

Southern California Edison announced Friday that it will collaborate with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography on seismic studies looking at offshore faults near the San Onofre nuclear plant, beginning later this year. Edison requested approval last year from the California Public Utilities Commission to recover $64 million from ratepayers for seismic studies that will help to determine the future of the plant. Caroline McAndrews, Edison's director of nuclear strategic projects, said the collaboration with Scripps will account for about half of that.

Russia President Dmitry Medvedev signed agreements to develop new nuclear plants in India as the countries sought to deepen ties. Russia will build more reactors at the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu and plants in other parts of the country, the Indian government said. India signed a nuclear pact with the United States this year, giving New Delhi access to civilian nuclear fuel and technology. "The agreement on civil nuclear cooperation with Russia marks a new milestone in the history of our cooperation with Russia in the field of nuclear energy," Premier Manmohan Singh said.

China plans to build its third commercial nuclear power plant on the southern island of Hainan, the China Daily said Tuesday. It said the plant will have a capacity of 300,000 kilowatts and will be one of several power plants aimed at boosting the island's output to 2 million kilowatts, almost 10 times current capacity. China is already building two nuclear power plants, one at Daya Bay in Guangdong province near Hong Kong and the other at Qinshan in Jiangsu near Shanghai.

The Soviet Union has scrapped six nuclear power projects because of earthquake danger or tougher standards imposed after the Chernobyl accident, a top Soviet official said Friday. Although official media have reported the cancellation of several projects because of growing public opposition, the list provided by Minister of Atomic Power Nikolai F. Lukonin was the first comprehensive report on the state of the Soviet nuclear power industry.

One of two nuclear reactors at Surry Power Station remained shut down after two electrical transformers that provide backup power to the plant quit working. Unit Two was shut down Saturday night after steam blew out some sheet metal, which landed on a power line that serves one of the backup transformers, a spokesman said. Officials weren't sure what caused the second transformer to shut down. Authorities said there was no danger to the public.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, reversing course, decided Tuesday against scrapping a program designed to test security against terrorist attacks at nuclear power plants. The program, which was begun after the Gulf War in 1991, was quietly eliminated in September as part of a cost-cutting reorganization.

An oil spill affecting hundreds of miles of scenic Japanese shoreline drifted toward seaside nuclear power plants Friday, threatening to clog vital cooling systems. Coast guard and fishing ships rushed to set up a boom around parts of the spill near the entrance to Wakasa Bay to keep the oil from the power plants ringing the bay. Officials of Kansai Electric Power Co.

The American public is divided about whether to eliminate federal subsidies for any form of energy and is giving less support to nuclear power and U.S. funding of renewable energy, a new poll has found. Fifty-four percent of respondents opposed doing away with subsidies for oil, gas, coal, nuclear or renewable energy, while 47% favored the idea. Support for building more nuclear power plants has fallen dramatically, to 42% from 61% in 2008. The Yale-George Mason University poll being released Thursday found that 76% of Americans support regulating carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas pollutant and that two-thirds believe the U.S. should pursue policies to reduce its carbon footprint.

The extended closure of the San Onofre nuclear plant due to safety concerns has led some to speculate — or hope — that the plant will be shuttered for good, but the chief nuclear officer for plant operator Southern California Edison said he doesn't believe the problems signal the plant's demise. "There's nothing I'm aware of today that would make me conclude that," Southern California Edison Senior Vice President Pete Dietrich said in a telephone interview Monday, speaking to The Times for the first time since the plant was forced to close.

California's initiative process can be both a wonderfully democratic and perilously dumb way to make law. On no issue could that be more true than the proposed initiative to shut down nuclear power in the state. The initiative would shut down the Diablo Canyon and San Onofre nuclear plants until the federal government approves a permanent disposal site for nuclear waste. The issue is scientifically, environmentally and economically complex, and tangled with powerful emotions. Between the facts and those feelings, guess which will have more influence on the choice people make?

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, citing serious concerns about equipment failures at the San Onofre nuclear power plant, has prohibited Southern California Edison from restarting the plant until the problems are thoroughly understood and fixed. The plant has been shut down for two months, the longest in San Onofre's history, after a tube leak in one of the plant's steam generators released a small amount of radioactive steam. Since then, unusual wear has been found on hundreds of tubes that carry radioactive water.

A year ago, Southern California Edison announced the installation of four new steam generators at the San Onofre nuclear power plant, hailing it as a major boost to electricity production. The $671-million generators, which will be paid for by rate increases to Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric customers, were supposed to save ratepayers $1 billion over the next decade and extend the life of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. But for the last two months, San Onofre has been shut down after officials discovered problems in the generators' heat transfer tubes.

The San Onofre nuclear power plant came under renewed scrutiny last week after a small radiation leak and the discovery of extensive tube damage. The leak and the tube wear "at no point posed a danger to the community or to workers on site," said Jennifer Manfre, spokeswoman with Southern California Edison, which operates the facility. But the incidents raised concern among environmental groups, which for years have kept a close eye on the plant near San Clemente following other safety problems.

Citing a prolonged series of shutdowns and safety violations at the Rancho Seco nuclear power plant, Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles said Wednesday that if elected governor, he would move to close the troubled reactor, located about 20 miles southeast of the capital.

Kazuo Okawa's luckless career as a "nuclear gypsy" began one night at a poker game. The year was 1992, and jobs were scarce in this farming town in the shadow of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. An unemployed Okawa gambled and drank a lot. He was dealing cards when a stranger made him an offer: manage a crew of unskilled workers at the nearby plant. "Just gather a team of young guys and show up at the front gate; I'll tell you what to do," instructed the man, who Okawa later learned was a recruiter for a local job subcontracting firm.

At least one person was killed and four injured when a furnace exploded Monday at the Marcoule nuclear waste treatment site in southern France. Authorites say there was no radioactive leakage to the outside. Evangelia Petit of the Agency for Nuclear Safety confirmed the explosion but declined to provide further details, according to the Associated Press. The Marcoule nuclear plant is located in Langedoc Roussillon, in southern France, near the Mediterranean Sea. The site of the blast does not reportedly contain any nuclear reactors.