San Onofre’s Landmark Nuclear Unit Put to Rest : Energy: State’s oldest commercial nuclear generator is taken off line. Some weep, critic cheers.

With heads bowed and some eyes brimming, a death of sorts was somberly marked early Monday when operators shut down California’s oldest commercial nuclear generator, Unit 1 at San Onofre.

Although the 25-year-old plant had temperamental moments and created a few minor frights, handlers who had gained a certain affection for the 450-megawatt pioneer took its loss hard.

“It’s my life’s work; it’s like losing a relative, a friend,” said Jay Iyer, who helped design Unit 1 back in 1963 and was there in the small instrument control room when the end came.

Technician Regis Weber found a personal means of expressing grief when he clambered up the metal stairs to the roof of the building and sweetly played “Taps” on his silver trumpet. Co-workers rushed to their office windows to watch, some barely concealing emotion, others cheering Weber.

“We all feel like a team, and we’re all getting dispersed,” Weber said.

Bad economics claimed Unit 1, as lagging plant efficiency and high operating costs persuaded the state Public Utilities Commission to order owners Southern California Edison Corp. and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. to pull the proverbial plug. The reactor had been designed to operate until 2004.

California still has four nuclear power generators, including two newer units at San Onofre and two at Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo. Although Unit 1 wasn’t the first nuclear generator to close--voters fearing for their safety shut down troubled the Rancho Seco plant near Sacramento in 1989--Unit 1 was a celebrity.

“It’s history, it’s the passing of an era,” health physics engineer Sherry Folsom said, noting that the facility earned fierce loyalty. “Everyone here refers to Unit 1 as ‘she.’ I don’t know why.”

Still, not everybody lamented what was clearly a sad occasion for the nuclear power industry.

Sherry Meddick, a local member of Greenpeace who has protested outside San Onofre, regarded Unit 1’s demise as a glorious day for public safety and for the truth about nuclear power.

“I can be thankful at least one of those units is shut down,” Meddick said. “I feel a little safer to live in this area.”

Meddick believes the harsh economic reality that felled Unit 1 also disproved the industry’s boast that nuclear energy is cheap and efficient.

“Unit 1 represents a failure of the nuclear institution,” she said.

In the plant’s history, there have been occasional scares, such as the time a small fire broke out and another case in which a power outage damaged some of the pipes. Such incidents led critics to maintain the plant was unsafe.

But for the 270 workers who have staffed Unit 1, it wasn’t a day for partisan polemics over nuclear power, but a time for sentiment and carefully putting a giant to rest.

Unit 1 is also called Mt. Fuji because of its peaked top that appears to be capped with snow --actually a lavish deposit of sea gull droppings. San Onofre, located on the coast near the northern border of San Diego County, is probably known more for its domed Units 2 and 3, visible from Interstate 5.

For its first decade, Unit 1 usually functioned at better than 70% capacity, yielding 2.5% of Edison’s power and 3% for SDG&E.; (Edison owns 80% of San Onofre and SDG&E; owns 20%.)

However, in the 1980s, much more stringent regulations caused the facility to be taken off line, sometimes for years, while extensive improvements were made. Unit 1 cost $90 million to build, but $660 million more was spent to upgrade it.

The Public Utilities Commission figured it would cost ratepayers $250 million to $750 million more to keep the old plant functioning.

Despite improvements, the plant’s efficiency dwindled to 50% to 60% in recent years. In an irony that caused twinges Monday, the unit went out in style by operating 377 straight trouble-free days, a 98% capacity performance.

Yet the decision had been made, and technicians and administrators--some coming in on their day off--gathered at 5:01 Monday morning as the pistol-grip handles controlling the 1,800 r.p.m. steam turbine were switched to the “off” position.

An hour later, the so-called “joy stick” on the console of the control room was pulled, and, like a terminal patient, Unit 1 ceased to be. Since Saturday, the system had been gradually geared down.

Plant Supt. Jack Schramm, who has been involved with Unit 1 since 1965, had months to accept the unit’s fate, but watching was still hard. He was with the unit before computers, and he remembers using slide rules to make calculations.

“It was built during an era when there was less sophistication in design,” Schramm said. Yet he stayed with Unit 1 during occasional troubles and glitches, and believed in the system’s integrity.

“In our eyes, we considered it quite reliable,” Schramm said.

Russ Krieger, station manager at San Onofre and Schramm’s boss, worked with Unit 1 for 20 years and somberly watched the business-like procedures as the turbine and the reactor went off.

He already speaks in the past tense.

“It was a very close-knit organization,” he said. “There was a lot of camaraderie and a tremendous amount of enthusiasm because we were on a record run.”

After nursing Unit 1 through its troubles, Krieger is “disappointed” it had to end like this. “Every time, we were able to bring the unit back. This time was beyond our control,” he said. “It was shut down for economic reasons.”

To Folsom’s observant eyes, the degree of sadness was evident in another way. Usually, sweets are quickly devoured in the control room, but Monday, 50 doughnuts and a chocolate cake were brought in, but no one had any appetite for goodies.

“There were all those doughnuts and cake, and nobody wanted any of it,” she said.

Most of Unit 1’s 270-member staff will go to work on San Onofre’s Units 2 and 3, or find other jobs with Edison. But 70 people will remain at Unit 1, partly to oversee the removal of fuel rods, which will be deposited in a nearby 40-foot-deep pool for spent fuel.

The nuclear reactor will go cool and dark, and the 30-foot-deep vessel that held the fuel rods will be emptied of water, probably next June.

“We’ll drain it and walk away from it,” Krieger said.

The actual unit will remain standing until all of San Onofre is decommissioned, possibly after year 2013. Ultimately, the entire 80-acre complex must be dismantled, and the beach will appear as it did long before the nuclear age.

There’ll be one last reminder of Unit 1, though.

Under an agreement with the state PUC, the two utility companies are allowed to recover $460 million in costs and interest that was invested in the unit, but won’t be earned back.

So utility customers will pay an average 75 cents a month for four years to reimburse Edison and SDG&E.;