Nuclear Power: The strange tale of San Onofre Unit One

San Onofre, California, 1968:



San Onofre Unit One started generating electricity in 1968. It was a 450 Megawatt Westinghouse Pressurized Water Reactor, and at the time was one of the largest nuclear power plants in the world. Its shiny 2.5cm thick steel containment dome was a distinctive feature as viewed from the beach or the nearby highway. Later, in 1976, the shiny dome was hidden behind an ugly 1 meter thick steel reinforced concrete containment structure.

In 1983 and 1984 two more nuclear reactors were added to the site, San Onofre 2 and San Onofre 3.

In 1992 San Onofre One was permanently shut down after the operators decided it was too expensive to maintain. It was sometimes a cranky machine to operate, and this may have become more troublesome from a safety and financial standpoint as the original operating staff retired and experience was lost.



The dark circular feature in the upper left hand corner is a water reservoir.
The next circular feature is Unit one, and so on. Owing to the mild Southern
California climate, much of the generating equipment is not enclosed within a
building as it is in other places.

As a young activist I was involved in some of the research opposing the newer plants, and the plants at Diablo Canyon. I spent a lot of time on the road commuting between San Luis Obispo and San Diego, with occasional trips to Berkeley, Sacramento, and Humboldt Bay. It was during this time I met Dr. Helen Caldicott and other internationally recognized anti-nuclear activists. I did most of my research in libraries, but dumpster diving and other sorts of less reputable research activities were not beneath me. At times, crawling about a dumpster, I could pass as a skinny scruffy homeless guy looking for food.

Sometime in the mid 'eighties I became disillusioned with all of this, and began to feel as if I was being used, but therein lies a tale of twisted romance, so I recognize my own feelings are not a firm foundation for any rational sort of argument. Suffice to say I began to feel that too many anti-nuclear activists didn't know what they were talking about. I abandoned the anti-nuclear cause, along with a few people I'd considered friends. But that's another story, not entirely mine to tell.



Active dismantlement of San Onofre One began in the late 1990's. The roof of the thick concrete containment structure built in 1976 was removed, exposing the steel dome, as can be seen in the picure above. Holes were then cut in the steel dome, and the equipment was removed and placed into specially made shipping containers for transport to South Carolina.

It's my own opinion that it would have been much safer and much less expensive to leave the plant in place, within the security perimeter of the operating plants. But there was money to be made. Basically, the anti-nuclear activists were put to profitable use by the contractors doing the work. Anti-nuclear activists claimed it would cost billions to dismantle a nuclear power plant, so, by golly, the opportunity was there to make billions. That's how big business works. Grab the consumer by the ankles, lift, and shake. Let the anti-nuclear activists convince the consumer it's for their own good. (As a side note, the anti-nuclear activists also lobby for the fossil fuel industry, once again, for free.)

Here is the reactor vessel being removed from Unit One:



Here are some people working on the shipping container after the reactor vessel was placed within it:



These pictures are remarkable to me because they are so mundane. The old reactor vessel was lifted out by a crane, it was hanging out there in the open, yet no blinding flash of gamma rays turned everyone within a ten mile radius into cancerous mutants.

So why bother moving it? Why not leave it where it was?

I think the emotional argument is that a thousand years from now, after civilization has crashed and burned and rebuilt itself, somebody might want to build a beach house there. They might not know the place was a nuclear power plant.

This neglects the very real possibility that our civilization will fail because we've depended too much upon fossil fuels. I am now convinced the dangers of fossil fuels far exceed the dangers of nuclear power.

I think this probably would have been a perfectly fine solution, inasmuch as it would have caused very little environmental damage.

However, I think it is important to demonstrate with reactors like these, those of the first nuclear era, that the environment in the area can be restored to its original condition.

This contrasts noticeably with the site of an oil refinery, and oil field, a coal strip mine, etc.

Personally I would not like to see reactor cores left to rot, except maybe in very remote places.

There's quite a bit invested in many reactor cores, inasmuch as the preparation involves one of the most difficult separations in chemistry, the separation of hafnium from zirconium.

I have seen some proposals to use old core materials as anodes and to recover the separated zirconium for reuse. I'm not sure that the price of zirconium is high enough right now to justify this, but it may be some day.

Zirconium is a fission product as well as a structural material. It is worth noting that one radioactive isotope of zirconium, Zr-93, is very long lived, with a half life of over a million and a half years. This isotope is formed both by fission, and by radioinduction (neutron capture) in natural Zr-92 in structural materials. (The latter process is less important, but accounts for much of the residual radioactivity of reactor cores.) The isotope is a pure beta emitter and not much of a cause of concern: Structural materials fall well below the activity of uranium ores within ten years. As you can see from your pictures, there is not much concern with this radioactivity, but it is real.

Interestingly one can get isotopically pure Zr-90 by letting Sr-90 decay. Theoretically this would be the very best structural material for building nuclear reactors, since the capture cross section of Zr-90 is extraordinarily low, lower than most nuclei known with the exception of a few like Helium-4 (zero). Recycled zirconium would be somewhat less suitable (although it would be practical) because Zr-93, alone among the Zr isotopes has a relatively high neutron capture cross section. However the low concentration of this isotope mitigates, and would allow practical recycling.

People are very, very, very weird about radioactivity from a risk assessment standpoint, and I'm quite sure that California would be one of the last places on earth that would have accepted leaving the core in place. Probably that would have been the lowest risk approach, but not the one that would have been politically palatable.

But, yes, it is nice to know that it can be done.

The core and any associated equipment probably should be removed: partly because it's full of useful stuff, but also because it has the potential to be dangerous. A closed down reactor reliant on a fence, locked doors and couple of bored security guards would be like a magnet for trouble makers: When I was 14 I'd go for an interested poke round in barns, building sites, disused factories... I'd think nothing of slipping into a disused reactor given half the chance (this being before Chernobyl, naturally.)
All it would take would be a lack of maintenance on the perimeter and a guard with a cold watching the monitors and it becomes a possibility - Granted, a remote one, but it has to be considered.

I'm reminded of an incident in Brazil where a few grams of Caesium were stolen from a disused hospital (Ooh, pretty blue glowing stuff) and caused all sorts of death and mayhem as it was passed around: Leaving the stuff there was a big mistake.

Returning a reactor site to green-field conditions however - especially if it's next to other, operational reactors - seems like overkill, and is probably a fair chunk of the cost.

BTW, Thanks for the OP Hunter - a fascinating story and some great pics. :)

First of all, the Goiania material represented highly concentrated radioactive material that was very mobile.

The material was nearly pure Cs-137, and was so radioactive it glowed. It was contained in a small capsule in an abandoned cancer treatment device. The capsule was broken open, and the people who handled it thereafter were so poorly educated about radiation and radioactivity that they gave it to their children to play with, being entranced by its beautiful blue glow.

Cesium is very mobile, very soluble, and in fact behaves almost exactly like potassium. Thus when ingested, it became widely distributed in the tissues of the people who ate it. Cesium-137 has a relatively short half life, 30.23 years, emits both highly energetic beta rays and gamma rays and its daughter nucleus, Ba-137m is a powerful gamma emitter with an very short half-life. The concentrations were designed to kill cells, specifically cancer cells, but when uncontrolled kills all cells.

Four people were killed, and 244 received serious radiation doses as a result of this accident. It is expected that of the 241 who survived, many will likely ultimately get leukemia.

By contrast, zirconium metal, unless burned at extremely high temperatures, is one of the most chemically resistant metals known. This is, in fact, why it is used in reactor cores. Since zirconium has many stable isotopes, all of which have small neutron cross sections, the concentration of zirconium-93 is never very high and the radioactive isotopes remain dilute under all circumstances. Moreover, Zr-93 is a pure beta emitter and emits no gamma radiation. Finally the long half-life means that its specific activity is relatively low, especially compared with the cesium isotope. I would expect the metal to remain in its metallic state for hundreds of thousands of years, and for any conditions leading to its corrosion and dispersal to necessarily involve tremendous dilution. It is difficult to imagine that sufficient concentration could ever be physiologically obtained as to assure death or even injury.

Therefore I don't think a reactor core represents a very serious risk. Although it is much more massive than the tiny cesium-137 capsule in the Brazilian accident, it dilution makes it infinitely safer. Living 200 feet from an abandoned reactor core is certainly not comparable to the risk of living a few miles down stream from a coal ash containment dam.

Yes, Goiania (and thanks for the name, BTW, I can check my facts now!) was an extreme event, in terms of TBq, stupidity and ignorance, which is why I chose it: Not even the most ardent anti-nuke protester would argue that disused reactor cores are full of glowing salts there for the taking.

I shall bow to your considerable knowledge on the matter. Although I confess I remain as leery of radiation as I am of spiders, these days I recognise the difference between irrational and rational fears: I'm not sure that puts me in the majority, though.

I guess what I'd really like (if I was near a disused reactor and had an inquisitive 14 year-old) would be a survey of every nook and cranny with geiger/scintillation counters to check the residual levels were well within guidelines, and confirmation that anything not nailed down was safe - a bit of added expense for the operator, but probably cheaper than removing the whole thing.

I crawled around a lot of places I wasn't supposed to be. Such places still call to me, but I like to think I have some sense now.

It actually makes me sort of sad that many of the spooky industrial places I visited as a kid and young man have been cleaned up and made safe. There used to be a lot of mines and industrial facilities in California that had simply been abandoned -- one day they'd been working, the next day the gates were locked and nobody ever returned. The file cabinets in the offices were still full of papers, and the labs were still stocked with chemicals. I once entered a rotting wood shed at an abandoned depression era gold mine that contained many unopened barrels of sodium cyanide.

A point I haven't hammered home here lately is that I no longer consider radioactive toxins qualitatively any different than other sorts of industrial toxins. If there is a difference, it's that radioactive toxins are easier to find -- they practically call out "Here I am!" by their radiation. Other hazardous substances are stealthy.

For example the public is very rightfully upset by the environmental damage done by open atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, which was truly awful, but another environmental disaster that was unfolding at about the same time was the use of tetra ethyl lead and benzenes in gasoline. The lead damaged people's brains, and the benzenes caused cancer. The damage done by leaded gasoline probably exceeds the damage done by nuclear weapons testing. Ordinary people driving around in their cars did far more damage to the environment than the people testing bombs.

...still flies up.

The idea that you are spreading, it is the anti-nuclear people who have caused all the problems, is a dog that don't hunt.

If ya want to blame anyone for the demise of nukes in the US, blame the bankers. Blame the power companies, blame the ancient idea that "nuke power is too cheap to meter".

The idea that nukes are gonna save is us bull crap. Most co2 comes from automobile usage. Blame your car for the co2. I do, and I drive half what I used too, and plan on driving even less, and even then more efficiently.

The nuke-nazis are so blinded by their "here I am radiation", one has to surmise that they simply can't see past their own little glow.

:puke: on nukes

I thought in one of your recent "poor me," crying posts you were in fact accepting blame. Now you are denying blame again? Well, it's hardly a surprise that you are confused.

For the record, DP's pleas notwithstanding, I still hold you, and your fellows, morally responsible for the destruction of the biosphere.

We'll add to this pixilated posturing some consideration of the fact that you have managed, in a new application of misapprehension on a grand scale, to confuse completely what is being said, throwing in for good measure the word "Nazi," in an apparent grand scale misrepresentation of what that word means too. One wonders which is worse, your moral sense (more properly your lack thereof), or your appreciation (again, more properly, lack therof) of history.

As always, your appreciation of data is equally abysmal: The data on the actual contribuiton of various fuels is readily available on the internet: http://www.eia.doe.gov/environment.html Coal and natural gas, which still do not operate automobiles, as we can see, produced about 3.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2001, while petroleum for all uses, including non-automotive uses, accounted for 2.4 billion tons. Here in 2006, the situation is much, much worse. We're up to more than 7 billion tons now, and you still have no clue whatsoever what to do with this intractable waste.

But who cares about a few billion tons between friends? It's not as dangerous as the pictured reactor, because, well, well, why was that again?

Now, that we've disposed on any factual basis for your absurd claim, let's touch on the implication of your rather incredible statement that "most co2 (sic) comes from automobiles."

Does that imply in your curious calculations, that all other CO₂, which comes from power generation can be ignored. If that is, in fact, what you are claiming, maybe you can inform us of the ethical basis for your contention that global climate change is not caused by, say, coal or natural gas generated carbon dioxide. Does this mean that we should only pay attention to that fraction of say, starved infants, that can be attributed to automobile use? Let's say a million people die in Mali from climate change induced drought, and let's pretend, in a grand game of moral denial, that 55% of the carbon dioxide produced this year comes from automobiles. Should we treat this case therefore as if only 450,000 died? Is that it? Out with it, boy!

Remember the soup nazi from Seinfeld?

"You ask question? No soup for you!"

If it strikes you as mean spirited, that's your problem, not mine.

You are the one saying: "You ask question about my nuke soup? No soup for you".

If the shoe fits, wear it.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/summary/carbon.html



Carbon dioxide emissions from the transportation sector are the largest source of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. At 1,933.7 MMT, the transportation sector accounted for 33 percent of total U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in 2004. Transportation sector emissions increased by 3.1 percent in 2004 relative to the 2003 level of 1,875.7 MMT. Almost all (98 percent) of transportation sector carbon dioxide emissions result from the consumption of petroleum products: motor gasoline, 1,162.6 MMT (60 percent of total transportation sector emissions in 2004); middle distillates (diesel fuel), 428.2 MMT (22 percent); jet fuel, 237.4 MMT (12 percent); and residual oil (heavy fuel oil, largely for maritime use), 54.6 MMT (2.8 percent). The growth in transportation-related carbon dioxide emissions in 2004 included increases in emissions from the use of motor gasoline (21.2 MMT), diesel fuel (17.9 MMT), residual fuel oil (10.0 MMT), and jet fuel (8.2 MMT).

the numbers?

First, let me repeat the question: Do we ignore any global warming deaths that are not caused by cars?

Let me put this another way, even though I know that you will avoid the question morally and factually, and that any attempt you make at responding will be through the prism of your complete misinterpretation of basic explanations: Does the existence of specially labeled carbon dioxide from cars change the physics of carbon dioxide from coal?

If you have a shard of moral decency to oppose coal burning, how do you propose to do this without appeal to nuclear energy? Can you demonstrate a sufficient shard of intellect as to propose a solution?

Since you don't know any history whatsoever, your knowledge of history apparently being as weak as your comprehension of energy, let me tell you what many Germans who were not Nazis did during the Nazi era, child. They engaged in denial, some really going so far as trying to tell themselves for instance, that the disappearing Jews were being "resettled." So out with it boy, can you work your denial muscles up hard enough to deny that your opposition to nuclear energy, which is coterminous with support for more coal burning, is helping to kill all those people who are killed by coal? If there is international retribution for our climate actions, will you be yet another one who says, "We didn't know?" Since you are claiming expert status on what is and what is not nazism, is this simply a matter that up until now, most of the people killed by global climate change are not white? Do you really insist, yet again, that these famines, these floods, these melted glaciers, the changes in the distribution of disease vectors, is all because of cars? Have you, sir, finally, no sense of decency?

As for the alleged appeal to data, I won't touch on the difference between cars and transportation. Somehow I think that the diesel fuel used to power freight trains and passenger trains is more wisely used than that used for cars and trucks. I also note that even this diesel energy can be replaced with electricity, as has been demonstrated industrially in many places in the world, electricity being the product produced at most nuclear stations.

Nor will I excuse your inability to distinguish, through the appeal to simple arithmetic, the question of whether the fuzzy writing was involved in the decision of the EIA's writer to omit the word "single" in the phrase "the largest (sic) source," in the paragraph that begins with



Of course, I don't really expect people who can't think to recognize poor writing even though the meaning can be gleaned anyway. I always say that writing and thinking are related.

It is very clear in the very same sentence what this means, since it specifically states that the transportation sector is responsible for 33 percent of carbon dioxide emissions. There may be a junior college somewhere where they offer courses in how to interpret whether 33 percent is the same as the majority. Of course, by using a device called a calculator, or an Excel spreadsheet on a computer, one can calculate this 33% by dividing 1933.7 by 5871 and doing something known as rounding. Since this is the case, for most people, the grammatically inexact statement can be ignored. Only those with poor thinking and reading skills will be tripped up.

So the fact remains that 67% of global climate change emissions in the United States are not associated with transportation. Let me ask you boy, even though I know you will not answer this question since the anti-nuclear position is identical to avoiding questions and analysis, should 67% of US emissions of carbon dioxide be ignored because you can't work a calculator or understand the more complex subject of risk minimization analysis?

I contend that most stationary energy uses, heat, machinery, communications, etc, can be run on electricity. I also know of a source for electricity that has extremely low output of carbon dioxide, a few grams/kw-hr, that being nuclear energy. The only limiting factor for the use of this form of energy is religious dogma that ignores all comparative statements about energy risk. As I point out nearly every damn day, comparative analysis is readily available. The website again is: www.externe.info.

I contend that since the world is rapidly becoming increasingly dangerous because of global climate change, which is actively destabilizing the planet even as I write, it is a moral question as to whether this religious dogma - the anti-nuclear position - should be acceptable among ethical people. I think it isn't, and I have no intention of softening that position until the matter of global climate change is solved, something that is very unlikely in my lifetime, if at all. I thus morally abhor people who hold the opposite view.

..if it were up to me, as say, the President, I would shut down coal plants tomorrow, but leave nuke plants running.

I would make people use electricity more efficiently, demand auto companies deliver an auto that got 100 mpg, and begin massive solar and wind projects. I would do everything in my power to lower pollution levels across the board.

But I would not foist upon later generations anymore nuclear wastes until the problem was fully worked out. Maybe it can be.

But you know how many votes I'd get. Not even your's, right?

We worked in Los Angeles before that, in commuter hell. We decided we'd NEVER commute again if at all possible, and by some small sacrifice and greater effort we've been able to achieve that. I work at home, and we can see where my wife works from our house, about a mile away.

It's a shame most people can't do that. As the price of gasoline rises people living in suburbs far from their work are going to feel the pinch.

I dare say I accomplished some good as an anti-nuclear activist in the late 'seventies and early 'eighties. Before this people were reluctant to talk about the specific technical details of nuclear power because the general public associated nuclear technology with the Cold War and matters of National Security. This culture of secrecy in the nuclear industry was very toxic to public discourse. I must confess I felt like a spy sometimes, and there was some little thrill involved in that.

I remember one time in particular at a public meeting where a Southern California Edison representative flat out lied about one of the emergency safety systems of San Onofre Unit One. I'm pretty sure he did it because he thought it was something the public didn't need to worry about, and the risk of any possible accident would be greatly misrepresented. I wasn't the kind of person who talked much then, but one of my friends went off in a near rage at his lie. Unfortunately, I think the general audience dismissed what she had to say because it was very technical, she was angry, she was a woman, and the damned SCE rep kept his cool and looked like he knew what he was talking about.

Sadly, some of the guys on our side were equally as smarmy and devious as the pro-nuke guys were.

It is a misrepresentation for you to claim that I am spreading the idea that "it is the anti-nuclear people who have caused all the problems." But I do think many of anti-nuclear activists are quick to misrepresent the facts, just as many pro-nuclear people are. And I'm not afraid to say that many anti-nuclear activists base their arguments on entirely emotional responses. Nuclear power is little more than a dangerous mystery to most people. Almost everyone has made a fire, and thus they feel they have some knowledge about how a coal or natural gas power plant works. The toxic substances spewing from a smokestack, or leaking out of a coal mine, are not scary to people even though they should be. Everyone has seen smoke.

But you can't see radiation, and you haven't played with nuclear reactions as a child as you may have played with fire. With nuclear power you have to trust the scientists, and engineers, and technicians.

Here in the United States we are no longer willing to do that. In politics our superstitions seem to be far more important than any reality.