The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) is a nuclear power plant located on the Pacific coast of California, in the northwestern corner of San Diego County, south of San Clemente. The site is surrounded by the San Onofre State Park and sits next to highway Interstate 5, and is well-known for the spherical containment buildings around the reactors.
The technical problems at San Onofre have plagued operators since construction as quoted in the July 12, 1982 edition of Time Magazine wrote, “The firm Bechtel was … embarrassed in 1977, when it installed a 420-ton nuclear-reactor vessel backwards” at San Onofre.
Unit 1, a first generation Westinghouse pressurized water reactor that operated for 25 years, closed permanently in 1992, and has been dismantled and is used as a storage site for spent fuel. It too had a spherical containment of concrete and steel with the smallest wall being 6 feet (1.8 m) thick.
Units 2 and 3 are Combustion Engineering pressurized water reactors have been shut down since January 2012 due to premature wear found on tubes in steam generators. Unit 2 shut in early January 2012 for refueling and replacement of the reactor vessel head.
In March 2012, former nuclear power executive Arnold Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates, prepared a report that argued that “design modifications in the newly installed steam generators, such as different alloy for the tubes, led to problems at the plant”.
Cooling Regulations
Unlike many pressurized water reactors, but like some other seaside facilities in Southern California, the San Onofre plant uses seawater for cooling, and thus lacks the iconic large cooling towers typically associated with nuclear generating stations.
However, changes to water-use regulations may require construction of such cooling towers in the future to avoid further direct use of seawater. Limited available land next to SONGS would likely require towers to be built on the opposite side of Interstate 5.
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