Nuclear reactor’s licence suspended after faults found

Press, 20 January 1982, Page 7

Nuclear reactor’s licence suspended after faults found

From the “Economist.'' London San Francisco The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in November suspended the licence it had given Pacific Gas and Electric just two months before to begin the testing of its Diablo Canyon nuclear power station at San Luis Obispo in California. It was the first time that the NRC has suspended a licence and it followed a series of revelations that the plant's design was not adequate to withstand a large earthquake. The suspension crowns a comedy of errors that has surrounded the $2.3 billion power plant since it was conceived in the 19605. Planners did not realise at first that three miles offshore was the large Hosgri fault, and so the plant had to be redesigned to cope with a big

earthquake. It has since become a prime target for protests bv environmentalists and in two weeks in September, as Pacific Gas and Electric prepared to load the nuclear fuel rods and begin testing, almost 2000 protesters were arrested. Keeping them out of the plant and putting them temporarily in jail cost the state of California, it now reckons about $3 million. A keen young engineer, doing more than his job required, discovered that the drawings for pipework in one of the two reactor vessels had been used to build the other. In consequence, the wrong weights of pipes were used in calculations to determine whether the pipe supports would be strong enough in a large earthquake. Some of the supports also seemed to be in the wrong places. The flurrv of second-guess-

ing that followed showed that similar errors had been made elsewhere around the pressure vessels and the plant's heat-exchanger equipment. Worse, it seems that Pacific Gas and Electric and its consultants on seismic design, John Blume, were somewhat informal about communicating data back and forth — often using word-of-mouth — so the trail seems almost impossible to retrace.

The NRC has told the company to gel a different consultant to make another review. The state wtll be allowed to comment on the choice. Pacific Gas and Electric feels that all this reviewing of reviews is most unfair.

It is now saddled, on its own estimate, with millions of dollars to pay for interest charges and. in lime, for the electricity that it will now

not get from Diablo Canyon and will have to buy elsewhere. Although there seems little likelihood of power shortages as a result it will be the consumer who has to meet this extra cost.

Where was the NRC all this time? Its chairman. Mr Nunzio Palladino, admitted lamely to the interior committee of the House of Representatives that he was as dismayed by its performance as the members were. The quality of nuclear plants, he explained, has to be built in; most of the inspection has to be left to the companies involved.

NRC inspectors at best can catch mistakes only after they have been made. At Diablo Canyon they did not even manage that; the younger engineer who discovered the trouble worked for the company.