San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS): Closure Has Ocean Desalination Ramifications

So Cal Edison permanent closure in San Clemente might have far-reaching implications for other projects in California, including the Poseidon Huntington Beach Seawater Desalination Facility in Orange County.

Courtesy: prwatch.org

(LAGUNA BEACH) - The announcement by Southern California Edison (SCE) regarding SONGS led to this recent headline:

“San Onofre closure will remake local power grid, PUC chief says…” by Abby Sewell  LA Times    June 11, 2013
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-san-onofre-cpuc-chair-20130611,0,3189452.story?track=rss

Statements made by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to the Times hint at possible multiple game changers regarding controversial “Once-Through-Cooling” (OTC) at power grid facilities.

The natural gas powered, AES-operated Huntington Beach plant that supplies SCE customers brought two (2) dormant, once-retired units back online last year to offset the SONGS being offline, and that’s where it starts getting intriguing.

It has a total of 4 generators onsite. Retooling and then rebooting those 2 steam turbines has made a difference between brownouts or outages locally. Disruption of many energy-reliant facilities like groundwater pumping for potable delivery, waste transport/pumping systems plus waste-into-drinking water treatment plants for extended periods would be catastrophic, not to mention create potentially communicable, epidemic health conditions.

“California finds backup power for offline San Onofre nuclear plant in Huntington Beach” by Ed Joyce  June 20, 2012

http://www.scpr.org/news/2012/06/20/32905/backup-electricity-found-offline-san-onofre-nuclea/

As summer of 2013 approaches, these 2 units will supply about 400,000 homes in the greater OC, and online sources claim that’s about 25% of the energy formerly provided by SONGS.

AES Operated Generating Station in Huntington Beach

For a master list of OTC plants and locations on the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) decommissioning or significant alteration candidates, go to this link, there’s probably one near you:

http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/ocean/cwa316/powerplants/

OTC was headed for significant modification/alterations or outright prohibition when individual, existing outfall discharge permits (NPDES) expire, with probably no new installations availing themselves of OTC.

And here’s where it gets a lot more interesting. Now the CPUC has signaled that everything is back on the table: Including existing OTC installations like the one in Huntington Beach where Poseidon hopes to “co-locate” a large ocean desalination plant.

The plant will provide 50 million gallons per day (50 mgd) of much needed drinking water for Orange County delivery agencies. It’s estimated to provide about 8% of our potable (drinking water) requisites, but it will only supplement or compliment and will not 100% replace existing sources. Increased wastewater reclamation and groundwater recovery systems will make a big dent too. There’s no one source, never was, never will be.

AES Huntington Beach (left) site for proposed Poseidon Seawater Desalination today

After off-the record interviews with South OC water and sanitation district engineers, estimates for total conversion to drinking water (potable) purposes at our treatment plants was about $1 billion. That’s not crazy talking. The engineers thought that I was the one who was nuts for even asking!

The plants would not only need very expensive and technically complex, state of the art upgrades, advanced tertiary as it’s known, but a lot more land would need to be purchased for such massive, monolithic installations.

The ocean outfall discharge infrastructure and required permits by EPA in South OC could be very problematic. Not only would these pipes, buried far out into the Pacific need recalibrating, that is replaced or rebuilt to larger capacity due to increased volumes, but the increased pollutant loading from advanced reclamation would have adverse impacts that couldn't be mitigated very easily---if at all. EPA monitors and limits such discharges under their NPDES Permit process. That's a crap shoot with unknown endgame.

Since the odors in wastewater treatment and reclamation aren’t all that pleasing, South OC neighbors near such projects will come out of the woodwork. This has already happened at the South OC Wastewater Authority in Dana Point. Expansion or increased usage is met with lawsuits.

Not all of the existing plants have adjacent build-out parcel potential, so new facilities at new sites must integrate their components into the affected area master plumbing system, and that too is physically and fiscally problematic. Property is NOT cheap in South OC. Miles of critical arterial surface streets will be torn up and then repaved, that’s not cheap and creates animosity via gridlock for commuters.

A lot of that road work will then require nighttime working periods, which also drives up improvement costs and is noisy in smaller compressed neighborhoods---So it’s more than inconvenient, in this day and age of fiscal frugality it’s probably unaffordable.

Eminent domain negotiations are always controversial because they’re compulsory, hostile purchases, and the lawsuits would protract the timeline and drive up costs astronomically.

That leaves the districts holding the balloon bag, driving rates up, up, and away. Which will also result in legal intervention by consumer advocates and angry ratepayers alike.

As an example, my hometown of Laguna Beach is 100% reliant upon imported water. Our Laguna Canyon Creek Watershed (approximately 8.5 sq. miles composed mostly of steep slopes) has a pitifully small and basically useless subterranean aquifer. So we have nothing to pump out. The Aliso Creek Watershed to our south is about 35 sq. miles, but it too has a very small, thin aquifer of no significant volume capacity. Neither the Laguna or Aliso would avail itself of worthwhile, cost-effective groundwater injection of advanced treatment wastewater and hence re-use/recovery for drinking purposes as they do in central OC. Infiltration techniques wouldn’t have a substantial underground reservoir destination, nothing to hold and then draw upon.

Due to more refined science and better hydrology modeling, the lower reach of the San Juan Creek Watershed tributaries and attendant groundwater basin capacity has been recalibrated by experts. Once, long ago, it was thought to have the potential to store around 100,000 acre feet/year (afy), enough for about 250,000 homes for a year.

That estimate has been going down and recently its been severely downsized. Keep in mind it’s an evolving field of research, so it’s not exact, no one has x-ray vision: About 26-28,000 afy was revealed just months ago to shocked and dismayed stakeholders.

All of this data has been confirmed by the SWRCB, San Diego (Region 9---Cal/EPA), so it’s not made up but consists of documented analyses and studies performed by independent 3rd parties.

Whereas we thought we had enough potential, if filled to capacity during rainy cycles, to last us through emergency periods if shared by communities, that’s no longer true. I gasped and was speechless when I heard this new estimate. It was like we had $100,000 in the bank for family sustenance through rough times and then got word that things had drastically changed overnight: Now we only had 1/4^th of that amount available, if at all during lean (non-rainy) periods.

This is why it irks South OC water districts, officials, staff and residents alike when Huntington Beach-based NIMBYS lecturing us, telling us that we just need to conserve more: We’ve already conserved as much as humanly possible----I don’t see any wasteful  swimming pools in my neighborhood.

We’ve tightened the fiscal budget belt to the final hole, state/federal grant and matching fund monies for potable have more hands in the pie every day, the US economy tanked, we’re stressed for water and they just whistle through our water supply graveyard.

As for the change in OTC status, the SWRCB had voted 3 years ago (May 2010) to sunset OTC by 2015 (5 year duration) due to several factors: The large intakes, many in the range of 20—30 mgd, in spite of fine mesh screens, capture and kill smaller yet critical ecosystem life forms. If sucked in due to incorrect calibration, life forms can become trapped against the filters and die inhumanely.

They use the water to cool plant equipment like large turbines and then return the water with abnormally high, elevated temperatures. In the cases of estuaries and ocean habitats, that’s an important difference for fragile aquatic species and their temperature range tolerances.

From the same column by Abby Sewell:

“CPUC Chairman Michael Peevey said energy officials will need to place more emphasis on efficiency and demand response, but that Southern California will also need upgrades to its transmission system and to either build new plants or repower plants along the coast that would otherwise be forced to close because of new regulations on the use of ocean water for cooling.

'We're going to have to have some generation, gas-fired, in those areas, and they will inevitably be CO2 emitters,' Peevey said.

He said he was hopeful that the new generation could be achieved primarily by repowering some of 11 gas-fired plants along the coast that might otherwise close rather than performing expensive upgrades to meet the new Once-Through Cooling (OTC) regulations.

While repowering those plants would be contingent on their owners deciding that it makes economic sense, doing so would be a much easier process than building entirely new plants, Peevey said.

‘Where could you possibly build another power plant in Southern California?’ he said.”

The Poseidon HB project is a wondrous anomaly, it actually benefits from several factors that must be included in the algorithm for analysis and public acceptance:

It’s a “co-location project” and will share the same land as it’s adjacent to the SCE owned station. See my 9/22/2012 column http://www.salem-news.com/articles/september222012/energy-resources-rb.php

It avails itself of co-using the AES water intake and exhaust system instead of creating two new, separate pipes. So there’s no increase in footprint regarding infrastructure.

AES site AFTER co-location by Poseidon Seawater Desalination Project (far right corner)

Moreover, desalination requires heated water, basically in a steamy state: Thus the water destined for Poseidon’s facility will already be conveniently “pre-heated” by the AES operating system and that equals saved energy costs. Energy costs are one of the greatest objections to desalination because rates follow the increased overhead expense curve.

This project is due to be heard in the late fall of 2013, trying to leap over its final jurisdictional hurdle: California Coastal Commission (CCC) ratification. Opponents are primarily NIMBYS, focused mostly upon the very things this project has as merits: Eventual lower delivery costs and minimal marine habitat impacts.

The same cabal is spending a lot of somebody’s money to lobby the CCC, the CPUC and the SWRCB, to “pull the plug” on OTC hence shut down the SCE facility and block the Poseidon project: A two-for-one.

For reference purposes, see my 3 part series on anti-development gadflies: “NIMBYS, Bananas, & Bandanas”