Drill Goes Smoothly at Nuclear Plant

Though the mood was serious and the faces solemn, a message board scrolled out the real story in red letters: “This is a drill.”

Public officials, nuclear experts and media representatives gathered Wednesday for Southern California Edison’s testing and grading of emergency preparedness at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station near San Clemente, the last such exercise this century.

“A good drill has lots of realism and there’s a knot in your stomach,” Ellis Merschoff, regional administrator for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said after Wednesday’s computer simulation of a nuclear disaster. “That’s how today went. It was a challenging and realistic scenario, and it seemed to be handled well.”

The test began at 8:13 a.m. when a red light in a simulated control room 2 miles from the plant signaled a leak of coolant from a reactor. The plant manager declared an alert while his five-member operating crew closely monitored all systems.

By 9:18 the alert had become an emergency, and an hour later plant managers were ordering evacuation of residents within 10 miles of the plant.

Meanwhile, a small army of officials and experts representing a wide range of public agencies--from the California Highway Patrol to the cities of San Juan Capistrano, San Clemente and Dana Point--met at more than a dozen emergency centers countywide to track the “disaster.”

At Edison’s Saddleback Service Center media room in Irvine, a group of reporters--actually Edison employees with notebooks and microphones--asked questions: “What does a meltdown mean?” “Is this a result of Y2K?” “Is the situation out of control?”

Edison spokesman Jarlath Curran fielded the questions deftly.

At the end of the day, Merschoff said he was impressed. “I didn’t see any glaring problems,” he said. “It was a good first day.”

The exercise continues today and Friday.