Reactor Shut Down to Replace Switches From N. Hollywood Firm

An Arizona nuclear power plant that supplies electricity for several Los Angeles-area utilities was shut down for much of Saturday to replace switches purchased from a North Hollywood company accused by federal authorities of counterfeiting electrical components.

The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station’s Unit 2 was shut down from about 2 a.m. until late Saturday night while workers replaced two switches bought in 1985 from California Breakers of North Hollywood. Units 1 and 3 at the plant had been shut down earlier for unrelated reasons.

California Breakers is one of six Southern California companies under investigation by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for allegedly labeling and selling used circuit breakers as new. Commission agents raided the companies’ offices and warehouses in July, 1988, and soon afterward warned nuclear power plants nationwide that they might have purchased faulty electrical components.

NRC spokesman Greg Cook said Saturday that the investigation has been turned over to the U. S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

The Palo Verde plant is operated by a consortium of utilities known as the Arizona Nuclear Power Project. Utility representatives said Southern California Edison owns about 15% of the Palo Verde plant, and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power owns a little less than 10%. The Southern California Public Power Authority, a group of smaller municipal utility companies, also owns a share.

Utility representatives said Saturday that the disruption in power production at the Palo Verde plant, 50 miles west of Phoenix, had no effect on the utilities’ ability to supply power to their customers.

Don Andrews, a spokesman for the Palo Verde plant, said officials there replaced about six circuit breakers earlier this year and decided to do some further digging into purchase records. “As a result of that search, we determined we had two electric switches that came from a vendor in California under suspicion by the NRC,” he said, referring to California Breakers.

The switches were labeled as being manufactured by General Electric. But representatives of that company were unable to determine that the switches had indeed been manufactured by G. E. As a result, plant officials decided to take the precaution of replacing them, Andrews said.

The plant was shut down at 2:10 a.m., and start-up procedures were begun Saturday afternoon, Andrews said. He said he expected the plant to be generating power by late Saturday night.

“The general problem with these is that we just don’t have the kind of assurance of the quality of the part that we require,” Cook said of the suspect switches.

Cook said Palo Verde officials certified the parts as qualified for use in a nuclear power plant before they were installed. But because of the federal investigation of the vendor, the utility felt it necessary to shut down and remove them.

Andrews said the switches have never caused a problem.