UPDATE: Feds deny group’s request for San Onofre nuclear plant license amendment via South California Public Radio

UPDATE 4:45 p.m.: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has denied an environmental group’s request to amend San Onofre’s license.

The NRC is deciding whether it’s safe to restart San Onofre’s Unit 2 reactor at reduced power.

But the Washington D.C.-based group Friends of Earth, wants more. It wants a license amendment that requires judicial-style hearings with testimony under oath.

David Freeman, Senior Advisor to the group, says that’s because the new steam generators that Southern California Edison installed two years ago were different than those put in under the original operating permit.

“If you think of it as a big tent they took the tent pole out and stuffed more tubes in there, and then their modeling was all wrong and when they turned the things on they started doing a hula hoop dance,” said Freeman.

Even though the NRC denied the petition, Freeman feels vindicated. He says the decision allows his group to pursue their case at the administrative level – effectively a “lower court” of the NRC.

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PREVIOUSLY: A leak in one of the reactors at the end of January 2012  led to the shutdown of the nuclear plant, which sits  on  a bluff on the seaside border of San Diego and Orange counties. The other reactor was already offline for maintenance.

But an  investigation of both reactors found an unusual amount of wear in many of the thousands of steam tubes in the plant’s generating systems.  SCE has been conducting tests on the two units at San Onofre.

Friends of the Earth (FOE) and other anti-nuclear activists say the plant is unsafe, is costing ratepayers millions of dollars and should be shutdown permanently.

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