Random Drug Tests Planned After Pot Found at 20 Sites at San Onofre

The operator of the San Onofre nuclear power plant revealed Friday that it had found evidence of marijuana use by workers 20 times in recent weeks, and announced it would begin random drug tests.

The testing plan announced by the Rosemead-based Southern California Edison Co. closely matches one under consideration by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for imposition on the industry nationwide.

At San Onofre, the first plant in the nation where a reactor operator was suspended by the NRC because of a positive drug test, trained dogs found drug residue in four spots, Edison said in a news release. The utility said follow-up sweeps found drugs or residue in 16 more spots around the northern San Diego County plant.

The searches were begun after the remains of marijuana cigarettes turned up in little-used rooms in reactor buildings where security clearance is required to enter, said NRC spokesman Greg Cook in the agency’s Walnut Creek office. Edison found marijuana in varying quantities at several spots, he said, but was unable to provide details.

There isn’t any way to tell whether anyone who actually runs the reactors was high on drugs, he said.

“They couldn’t identify who brought it on site,” Cook said. “There’s a heck of a lot of employees who work out there, and a lot of contractor personnel.”

Edison released few details of the searches, other than to say they had been conducted “in recent weeks.”

Edison said it didn’t believe drug use at the plant had ever endangered the public. Multiple levels of control and other safeguards protect plant operations from miscalculations by a single employee, the company said.

Similar Use Rates Found

An existing test program at San Onofre occasionally uncovers drug use by an employee, Cook said, but the rate of positive tests is similar to that at other plants. He was unable to provide numbers.

“They are probably not significantly different from anybody else,” Cook said.

San Onofre operator Maurice P. Acosta Jr. was suspended from control room duty in June because he failed a drug test, the first such case in the nation. He has appealed the suspension to the NRC.

Edison, which has had pre-employment testing since 1984 and is able to test for cause, said that on Nov. 7 it will begin random, unannounced drug tests of most workers at San Onofre. After one positive test, an employee will be offered a choice of dismissal or counseling; after a second positive test, the worker will be fired.

One Union Is Exempt

Members of one of the plant’s unions, the Utility Workers Union of America, will be exempt because a union challenge to an earlier testing proposal remains in the courts.

The Edison plan is nearly identical to one that will be considered by the NRC at a public hearing Monday in Maryland, Cook said. No timetable has been set for adoption of the national plan.

Under the NRC proposal, an employee who fails a second drug test would be barred from sensitive areas of nuclear plants for at least three years and a third positive test would bring permanent denial of access.

“We have good reason to believe that the rate of illegal drug use among nuclear plant employees is well below the level of the entire population,” Cook said. “I don’t think we’ll consider it satisfactorily low until it is zero.”