Los Angeles — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has concluded that the lack of adequate procedural guidance for operations personnel led to the leak of a small amount of anhydrous ammonia last Nov. 1 at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station about 45 miles north of San Diego. The leak triggered an alert and the evacuation of about 50 of the plant’s 3,200 workers. A statement by the NRC’s Dallas regional office said that the operators failed to adequately identify, evaluate, and correct the problem in the water purification system, which led to the leak. The NRC report warned, "The failure to take adequate corrective actions for degraded plant equipment was a performance deficiency. The performance deficiency is more than minor because it resulted in an emergency alert.” It found that guidance was not provided to operations personnel to fix problem once it was detected in a tank. The relatively small ammonia leak that occurred on the non-nuclear side of Unit 3 at San Onofre was isolated and stopped, clean-up completed, and the affected area of the plant returned to normal in about three hours. Southern California Edison, which operates the plant, emphasized that there was no threat to worker or public health and safety.
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