Below is a press release from Southern California Edison, concerning the recent finding by the NRC that steam generator tube testing being conducted by Mitsubishi did not closely match the design of tubes actually used in the steam generators at San Onofre. While that assertion by NRC is left to Mitsubishi to refute, it's important to understand that this testing has no bearing on the 70% power planned test period for San Onofre Unit 2. The press release below explains this situation.
-----------------------------------------------------
San Onofre Restart Plan Not Impacted by Recent Review of Manufacturer’s Testing by Nuclear Regulatory Commission
ROSEMEAD, Calif. (Dec. 18, 2012) — The Mitsubishi Heavy Industry testing under review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was not consulted or relied upon in developing Southern California Edison's (SCE) proposed restart plan for Unit 2 – a plan which includes preventive tube-plugging and operating the unit at 70 percent power for a five-month period.
SCE’s international team of experts conducted more than 170,000 inspections to understand the tube wear problem, and confirmed the effectiveness of the corrective actions we have identified to solve the tube wear problem. This work included three independent operational assessments of tube wear issues conducted by Areva Inc, North America, Westinghouse Electric Company LLC and Intertek/Aptech, none of whom based their review and recommendations on Mitsubishi’s testing. This was confirmed Tuesday by an NRC administrator at an NRC public meeting in Rockville, Md.
SCE submitted technical information to the NRC on Oct. 3 in support of a proposed restart of Unit 2, which is safely offline. The unit will not be restarted until all plans have been approved by the NRC.
The Unit 3 restart was not included in that regulatory filing and remains shut down.
Unit 2 was taken out of service Jan. 9 for a planned outage. Unit 3 was safely taken offline Jan. 31 after station operators detected a leak in a steam generator tube.
More information is available at
www.edison.com/songsupdate and at www.SONGScommunity.com. San Onofreis jointly owned by SCE (78.21 percent), San Diego Gas & Electric (20 percent) and the city of Riverside (1.79 percent). About Southern California Edison
An Edison International (NYSE:EIX) company, Southern California Edison is one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, serving a population of nearly 14 million via 4.9 million customer accounts in a 50,000-square-mile service area within Central, Coastal and Southern California.
-###------------------------------------------------
8:20 AM Eastern 12/21/2012
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW
0 comments:
Post a Comment