Wednesday, February 1, 2012

California's San Onofre's Leak Was 30 Gallons/Hr

Oh and the low level of radioactive gas may also have leaked.

30 gallons of water per hour = 113 liters of water per hour.

From Emformable (2/1/2012), citing the NRC event notification:

MANUAL TRIP DUE TO A PRIMARY TO SECONDARY LEAK GREATER THAN 30 GAL/HR

“At 1505 PST, Unit 3 entered Abnormal Operation Instruction S023-13-14 ‘Reactor Coolant Leak’ for a steam generator leak exceeding 5 gallons per day.

“At 1549 PST, the leak rate was determined to be 82 gallons per day. At 1610 PST, a leak rate greater than 75 gallons per day with an increasing rate of leakage exceeding 30 gallons per hour was established and entry into S023-13-28 ‘Rapid Power Reduction’ was performed.

“At 1630 PST, commenced rapid power reduction per S023-13-28 ‘Rapid Power Reduction’. At 1731 PST, with reactor power at 35% the Unit was manually tripped. At 1738 PST, Unit 3 entered Emergency Operation Instruction S023-12-4 ‘Steam Generator Tube Rupture’.

“At 1800 PST the affected steam generator was isolated.”

All control rods fully inserted on the trip. Decay heat is being removed thru the main steam bypass valves into the main condenser. Main feedwater is maintaining steam generator level. No relief valves lifted during the manual trip. The plant is in normal shutdown electrical lineup.

Unit 2 is presently in a refueling outage and was not affected by this event.

The licensee has notified the NRC Resident Inspector. The licensee has issued a press release.

8 comments:

Morgaine said...

San Onofre used to be a good place to surf. Sigh.

Anonymous said...

Would be nice to have DATA not just the usual..pat on head. If any US government officials are reading this blog, why not make a rule to TELL what the radiation leak radiation amount is? Lets not play Fukushima...

Anonymous said...

2:25,
Access to something like this?

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/38390947/IEMA-Remote-Monitoring-System

Stick to the local news for comprehensive coverage. Common folk without technical expertise shouldn't look at things that they don't understand.
It's just "a little" tritium...
everywhere

Anonymous said...

I wonder how many times nuclear reactors have leaked since their conception? These leaks don't seem to be considered as a breach of safety, but if they've been happening repeatedly, there must already be a lot of radioactive gas floating about.

Atomfritz said...

These leaks are just natural and common.

So there is no regulation that there must be no leak.
It's just regulated that only about somewhat less than one liter of radioactive water per hour is allowed to drip into the buildings.

The secondary circuit contains that tritium because heat transfer tube installations leak much internally from the primary into the secondary circuit.
Actually, tritium in the secondary circuit is a proof that the heat exchanger itself is leaking, releasing radioactivity into the -supposedly "clean"- secondary circuit.

It is very time- and worker-consuming to do repairs in the quite radioactive heat exchanger.

So these internal leaks are usually not remedied unless they become so big that secondary circuit contamination increase becomes an issue.

This tritiated water just gets released continually into the environment, so that the secondary circuit can be kept on a "safe" contamination level by regularly replacing the contaminated water with fresh water.

This is the reason why some US nuclear plants are allowed to excret up to 2000 curies (74 trillion becquerels) of tritium into the environment annually.

These famous "cancer clusters" strangely seem around nuke plants that release very much tritium.
But, as these releases are usually less than 2000 curies, it's no regulatory issue, anyway.

Anonymous said...

Californians have a one-time opportunity to shut down their nuclear power plants!

Signatures needed now!

Learn more here:

www.californianuclearinitiative.com

Anonymous said...

you can look up all the nuclear plants and see the problems they have had, Most all have had at least one reator shut down completly because of leaking or malfunctioning. Like the unit #1 at San Onofre has been shut down since 1992. All the plants in the US are over 30 years old most built like San Onofre, built in the 1960's!That is over 45 years old. We dont use anything that long,and no new ones are allowed. There is no where to store the spent fuel and people don't want it transported. Yucca mt is put on hold for fear of safty and the contaminating of the underground fresh water they have found. It has not been proven to be safe. All of our nuc plants are old and need to be replaced with new technology. They are not safe and there is not a place to put the waste they create. If people would conserve energy that would be a start. It doen't seem that many people even care to keep abreast of the issues with nuclear power.... But oh well,...what's the harm in alittle radiation, the Edison Electric Co wants us to believe. We get it from all kinds of places, it adds up. We are destroying our Earth and ourselves little by little! "Little leak here and a little leak there!"

Anonymous said...

People don't pay attention to much of anything except their own comfort. Can you imagine what it would be like if just 18 million people had to leave the San Diego area and not return. I live in the Las Vegas area and it not very cool during the summer. I doubt we could absorb that many people.

Sign and share he damn thing!

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