San Onofre: 100s of troubled tubes, gas leak

As workers began inspecting a leaky tube in one of the San Onofre nuclear plant's reactors Thursday, federal regulators said more than 800 tubes in a second, offline reactor showed wear and thinning, although they are only two years old.

And plant officials confirmed that sensors showed a tiny amount of radioactive gas may have leaked out of a building next to the first reactor before the reactor was shut down late Tuesday.
Article Tab: image1-San Onofre: 100s of troubled tubes, gas leak

All four of the plant's steam generators and their tubes are about two years old, installed after being delivered to the West Coast by the Japanese manufacturer of the generators, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

Some 9,700 tubes carry water from the reactor and through each generator.

"They have inspected 80 percent of the tubes in one of the steam generators at unit 2," said Victor Dricks, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "Two of the tubes have thinning so extensive that they need to be plugged and taken out of service. Sixty nine other tubes have thinning greater than 20 percent of the wall thickness, and a larger number have thinning greater than 10 percent of wall thickness."

The tubes with 10 percent thinning number more than 800, he said.

www.ocregister.com...

More San Onofre bad news........I don't know anything about reactor tubes but there seems to be new information on the San Onofre reactors at the nuclear plant everyday, this is the latest update from today.

reply to post by PageAlaCearl


I LOVED the part about the costs... two years ago and failing already... and yet we whine, bitch and complain that alternative energy sources are not financially feasible... ~cough-cough~ bull# ~cough-cough~ a hydrogen plan costs 1.3 billion to put into commision.....674 million is half way there

San Onofre completed its $674 million steam-generator upgrade in 2010, with two of the behemoths replaced in each reactor.

Now why not dump those funds into existing alternative energy power plants....
A. wave energy generation.... the plant sits right on the ocean anyways why not expand a portion of the plant for wave generation technology
B. thermal energy generation... just east of the plant is a literal hot bed of hot springs why not dump some money into that tech
c. hydrogen energy generation... and while they're at it put in a de-salinization plant... instead of the "toilet to tap" bull#.

Probably because they didn't do all if any of the upgrades and instead pocketed 300 million between a couple/few people...