San Onofre Reactor Closes for Weekend Repairs
A broken valve that proved difficult to fix forced Southern California Edison Co. to shut down a nuclear reactor at its San Onofre power plant, a spokesman said.
The reactor was shut down Saturday to repair a discharge valve that had broken earlier in the week, said Edison spokesman David Barron.
“They were trying to fix the valve Friday and they couldn’t get it fixed immediately, so they decided it would be better to just shut the reactor down Saturday and work on it over the weekend,” Barron said.
“There is no hazard associated with the outage to plant employees or the public,” he added. He said no radiation escaped during the shutdown.
The utility operates the power plant on the coast about 60 miles south of Los Angeles.
The Unit 1 reactor, which has an electrical generating capacity of 450,000 kilowatts, was operating at about 40% power, Barron said.
San Onofre has two other nuclear reactors, each capable of generating 1.1 million kilowatts. Unit 3 was operating at full capacity and Unit 2 was shut down for a scheduled refueling, Barron said.
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