Environment

Edison Posts Documents Related To San Onofre Online

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published September 4, 2013 at 2:57 PM PDT

This story was published more than 10 years ago.

The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station at San Onofre State Beach in a 2012 photo.

Southern California Edison, the majority owner of the now closed San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, has created a digital library of documents relating to how the steam generators were replaced with new generators that turned out to be faulty.

“It is vitally important" said Ron Litzinger, president of SCE, "that we all achieve a full understanding of the facts, so that future decisions by regulators and legislators are based on transparency and the highest quality information.”

However, some of the nearly 100 documents in the library are partially redacted because Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the company that manufactured the generators, asserts they contain proprietary information.

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Many questions surrounded the decision to replace the steam generators with generators of a different design, which ultimately proved to be fatally flawed. Excessive vibration of the tubes resulted in premature wear and a small radiation leak in January 2012.

The plant had to shut down about a year after the new equipment was installed. It never reopened. In June of this year, the decision was made to close the plant permanently.

SCE said in a news release that the company, "has asked MHI to agree that unredacted versions of these documents can be made public."

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.