Power went out in Santa Monica for nearly 3,000 Southern California Edison customers Wednesday afternoon after construction crews working on the new Palisades Garden Walk accidentally hit a duct of power cables, the Los Angeles Times reported.

An Edison spokeswoman told the newspaper that the outage occurred at about noon, affecting 2,800 customers in an area bounded by Ocean Avenue, North Marine Street, 20th Street and Arizona Avenue. The lights and telephone service were knocked out of service at Santa Monica High School, where students were let out of class early, the Times reported.

The Palisades Garden Walk is one of two new parks under construction near the Santa Monica Civic Center. Crews are currently moving dirt to grade and shore up the 6-acre site located between Ocean Avenue and Main Street.

For more on the power outage, visit latimesblogs.latimes.com.

Stay up to date on Santa Monica news and events by following @StaMonicaPatch and “liking” us on Facebook.

The following post first appeared on the website CityWatch and is being republished with permission from the author.

WHAT’S METRO HIDING? - James Francis Dolan, PhD. Professor of Earth Sciences at USC’s Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

The guy may be tone-deaf, for all I know, but he is literally one of the region’s true geology rock stars. The go-to guy when it comes to faults, tectonics and all that jazz. 

I have no idea if his friends call him “Jim” or “Jimmy” or “J. F.”  Somehow with all his contagious enthusiasm and dry sense of humor, I imagine that he’s a Jimbo, but it’s just a hunch. Jimbo Dolan, USC rock star.

His rock star qualities became apparent at Metro’s Oct. 19 presentation when, as a member of a panel paid by Metro, barely able to conceal his authentic intellectual pleasure at discovering new faults, he moved County Supervisor and Metro Board Member Zev Yaroslavsky to remark that he would have become a geologist if he had had such teachers at UCLA.

Yaroslavsky repeatedly referred to Professor Dolan as “Professor Dillon,” so maybe this is a case of where there’s Gunsmoke, there’s fire. As for the supervisor’s scientific ambitions, the retort from a Trojan would, of course, be: if you’d have gone to USC, you would have had such teachers.  

While there may be some who wish that Supervisor Yaroslavsky had had Dolan or at least a Dolanesque geology professor back in the day, one can at least agree that “science can be fun and fascinating.”

After having seen JD live at the Metro presentation—yes, that’d be the one that Metro Board Member and County Supervisor Mike Antonovich described as Metro lucha libre, where you know the outcome before the match begins—I was interested in learning more about our faults. No, not about my own individual faults, as I have enough people in my life to constantly remind me of those. But I was fascinated to learn there was a major fault along Santa Monica Boulevard, complete with the requisite scarps.

I also loved hearing about Professor Dolan’s sense of time. He mentioned how geologists have a different perception of the time-space relationship and how he once found himself saying, “Yeah, those rocks are really young: they’re only ten or fifteen million years old.” I can only imagine that an added benefit of studying under Professor Dolan would come to any of his students ever needing any extra time to finish off a term paper, report or thesis. Need a deadline extension? No problemo.  What’s an extra week or even an extra month, given the context? 

Having read a bit more about Dr. Dolan and having written about his Alquist-Priolo conclusions in the Huffington Post (in an article entitled “Fault-y Towers: Don’t Mention the Core!”), I wanted to take the opportunity to chat with him in person. This was, it should be duly noted, before the October Metro report was seriously called into question by the independent review conduct by Exponent Consulting.  

But whether the conclusions drawn by Professor Dolan and his cohorts regarding the seriousness of the Santa Monica fault were justified or not, I was interested not only in his scholarship about the Santa Monica fault, but actually mainly about other faults in the region, including the Puente Hills fault with its potentially devastating power to wreak the ultimate destruction on Downtown LA. I was concerned that maybe the extent of the faulting in the region wasn’t adequately documented, and wanted to hear his reaction to the suggestion that more funds be devoted to mapping the area to the same extent Metro had done with the Santa Monica fault.

Our Deputy City Manager called Dr. Dolan to try to set up a meeting. Dr. Dolan answered his own phone, unpretentious unlike other rock stars. Does Eddie van Halen pick up his own phone? How about Justin Bieber? But Dolan does and he graciously said he would be happy to talk to me. But there was a catch. He also said that he was under contract to Metro; we would need to talk to Metro to be able to talk to him.  

After repeated calls to Dennis Mori, Metro’s current Executive Officer, capital development, we finally got a response. (Mori is also the former project manager of the Red line, whose construction was perhaps most well-known for its near-fatal sinkhole on Hollywood Boulevard). The answer to my request was “no.” I felt like Michael Moore when GM denied his request to meet with then-General Motors CEO Roger Smith.

Metro was clearly being overprotective of their rock star. Yet I still wasn’t sure what their reluctance was. Were they scared that I was going to try to lure him to become Beverly Hills’s Chief Geologist? We do have a Chief Arborist, but not a Chief Geologist. At least, not yet.   

Perhaps they didn’t want me to talk to him about the fascinating subject of Alquist-Priolo zones? I had written at this URL about the potential consequences of the new fault discoveries. Perhaps Metro didn’t want to be seen in the greater development community of greater LA as being at fault for the faults. As I wrote, while that might stifle overdevelopment and be frowned upon in some quarters, in others it would be looked upon as a holiday gift, namely by those who prefer more human-scale, low-rise development.

Why was Metro denying access to Professor Dolan? What of open-source scholarship? It seems the only reasonable conclusion is that Metro wants to control Dolan, control the message, control the spin. But to what end?  

If Metro restricts access to their experts, just how objective, just how independent can those experts really be? For people in Beverly Hills, the answer will be something they feel they already knew all along. Are there parts about the good professor’s data or conclusions which could somehow, somewhere work against what Metro perceives to be its interests? Why did GM so studiously avoid allowing Roger Smith to talk to Michael Moore?

In the case of Metro, the issues would seem to be as follows:

Metro is not particularly interested in the impacts the potential new Alquist-Priolo zones indicated by Dr. Dolan’s scholarship would create on their developer friends.  They like TOD (transit oriented development, or “death” in German) and density because it increases ridership. So while they’re happy to use the new fault information to put the kibosh on any Santa Monica Boulevard station, they are also concerned about the effects building restrictions could create upon ridership both in Century City and along the length of the Santa Monica fault.

Furthermore, living in an earthquake zone and with many more potentially deadly and unmapped faults all around us, additional study and mapping of faults could muck up future subway expansion plans. It seems that Metro is employing a very selective “don’t ask, don’t tell” strategy. 

Don’t ask, for example, about the Puente Hills fault with its potentially devastating effects on huge swaths of the Downtown LA area. As mentioned, I wanted to talk to Dolan, among other things, about this fault. The conclusions it might lead to are perhaps not what Metro, their developer friends, as well as the politicians who benefit from their developer patrons, might want to hear. So don’t ask, don’t tell.

Dolan seems apolitical, and the only way to spin his viewpoints would be to control what he says; muzzle him about other potentially niggling facts, which as a scientist, he might be forced to conclude, but which would be bothersome to other aspects of Metro’s agenda.

In rejecting my request to meet with Professor Dolan, the “official” Metro line from Metro PR-meister Jody Litvak, responding on behalf of Dennis Mori, was that these paid experts—some of whom also happen to be professors at major universities—receive far too many enquiries from elected officials and media reps to reasonably fulfill. How odd: I seem to remember that Art Leahy said the experts would be available to media reps under the guise of “we’ve got nothing to hide” and “full transparency” messaging. In fact, his exact words at the Oct. 19 meeting were: “The panels that have just presented are available not only to answer questions now but they’re available to the media following the conclusion of this item on this committee.”

Let me get this straight: there are so many media requests to talk to Professor Dolan that there’s no time left over to talk to elected officials, especially in jurisdictions which passed Measure R by the highest of margins? If there are really that many media inquiries, maybe this guy just needs a press agent. Rogers and Cowan, where are you? You may have thought you had your hands full with Britney Spears, but another type of rock star awaits.

As a writer for various publications including the Los Angeles Business Journal, Huffington Post and the Beverly Hills Courier, I could perhaps reasonably qualify as a member of the media, but denying elected officials, especially those in areas that could potentially be affected by Metro’s plans, access to these experts seems nothing if not Orwellian. Are they afraid that independent elected officials (i.e. those who haven’t gotten financial donations from some of the potential beneficiaries of the subway routing) might ask questions that lead to different conclusions from their own spin?

I would have complete understanding if Metro were trying to restrict access to Lloyd Cluff, who was one of the “distinguished” and “independent” panel members conducting the peer review on the study. Cluff was until earlier last year the Director of Risk Management for PG&E, which gained notoriety throughout the state for their attempt to manipulate California voters through Proposition 16, a brazen and opportunistic ploy to protect PG&E’s monopoly within its sphere of influence (and which voters wisely rejected, despite the $46 million PG&E spent on propaganda). These textbook efforts to abuse the initiative process to cement their local monopolies were followed a mere few months later by PG&E’s gas explosion in San Bruno which killed eight people. Not a great year for PG&E.

Asking Cluff to be part of the peer review is a little like asking the risk managers for Chernobyl to serve on a Nuclear Power Safety Committee. The analogy isn’t as far-fetched as it might seem to some. After all, this is the same Lloyd Cluff who evidently feels it’s OK to build nuclear power plants on fault–lines. Cluff’s response to State Senator Sam Blakeslee, who expressed concern about the safety of his constituents living near PG&E’s nuclear power plant on a newly-discovered fault line was: “There’s uncertainty in everything. We don’t see a concern about the uncertainty.” So let’s get this straight: according to Cluff, it’s OK to build a nuclear reactor on a fault line, but a subway station is verboten?

So, yes, I completely get it if Metro wants to deny anyone and everyone access to their paid expert Lloyd Cluff, former Risk Manager for PG&E, the investor-owned utility which was responsible for the deadly San Bruno explosion (not to mention the attempted initiative scam that was Prop 16).  

But Jimbo Dolan?

Unfortunately, it would seem so. And here we have yet another reason why additional checks and balances should be imposed upon Metro, a public agency whose board consists of a number of elected and appointed officials, but whose board has not been elected directly by the taxpayers funding it. For starters, Metro should be subject to an extensive governance audit. The function Metro is supposed to serve is much too important to be left to a byzantine construct where a bureaucracy seems to be running the show, playing favorites and managing the board members in a way that would put some of Franz Kafka’s corporate cultures to shame.

Unfortunately, Metro’s refusal to allow elected officials access to Professor Dolan and the other panel members (sans Cluff) unnecessarily degrades Professor Dolan to just another talking head and for all Metro’s talk about the “independent” panel, gives cause to question his “independence”.  Tom Lehrer’s words about former VP Hubert Horatio Humphrey come to mind in slightly modified form: “Once a fiery scientist spirit, ah, but now when he speaks he must clear it.” 

What a shame that Professor Dolan’s ivory tower isn’t open to all; and as such, unfortunately, it perforce must lose some of its stature. Selective data by its very nature must lose credibility. After all, isn’t a great scientist willing to look at the bigger picture and all the consequences—at least isn’t afraid to examine and confront them all head-on?

Another Dolan was once proclaimed to be a “genius” for his mere suggestion of steak and a bottle of Lowenbrau. In the immortal words of Arthur Prysock “Tonight is kind of special.”

Today would be kind of special if Metro would “free Professor Dolan” and allow him to do what he does best: share the full wealth of his knowledge with those who are interested. All those who are interested. After all, that’s the Academic Way, isn’t it? In fact, on Supervisor Yaroslavsky’s website we can read the following:

While acknowledging that such discoveries [i.e. new faults] can spark concerns, Dolan said in an interview that he prefers to take an all-news-is-good-news approach.

“I think anything we learn about active faults in LA is always good news,” he said, “because it’s absolutely critical that we fully understand the seismic threat facing us as residents of earthquake country.”

While SC’s Professor Dolan, much like the eponymous steak and Lowenbrau-loving character from the Clio-worthy 70’s commercial may very well also be a genius, it’s difficult to appreciate the Professor’s brilliance if access to his knowledge and insight are being restricted by a Metro muzzle. 

What happened to the all-news-is-good-news approach? Isn’t all information good information?

Guess not for Metro.

C’mon, Metro: take the muzzle off of Professor Dolan.

To read the post on CityWatch, click here.

The Beverly Hills Courier on Friday published a story alleging that Metro is preparing to pay $38.7 million to JMB Realty for land to use as part of the Westside Subway Extension project. The Courier said the information came from a Metro report.

The Courier also alleged that the large payment is much more than the assessed value of the land and implied that the $38.7 million was a payment to a politically-connected developer.

Metro’s response: The story is completely erroneous. 

Metro documents and studies do not in any way detail a $38.7-million payment to JMB, nor is the agency planning a $38.7 million payment to JMB.

In fact, with the Century City station at the proposed Constellation and Avenue of the Stars location, the entire subway project with the station entrance and construction area using JMB property would cost $38.7 million less than another alternative not using JMB property.

Where does the $38.7 million number come from? It appears the Courier made an incorrect assumption and a math error.

First, some background: There are two possible station locations in Century City. One is under Santa Monica Boulevard, the other is under Constellation Boulevard. Metro staff have recommended the Constellation location for two reasons — first and foremost because there are active earthquake faults under Santa Monica Boulevard. Also, Constellation is more centrally located in Century City and more people are projected to use a station in that location.

As for the math error, it appears to have come from this chart in a Metro report titled “Century City Station Location Report.” The chart shows different costs of building at either of the proposed locations in Century City and the money amounts reflect all costs for the entire nine-mile project, including potential real estate acquisitions.

In the chart, “Constellation A” is a station on Constellation with a portal and construction staging area on JMB-owned property. “Constellation B” is a station on Constellation with a portal on Century Plaza Hotel property and a construction staging area on Century Park East. Metro staff prefers the Constellation A configuration in the first line in the chart.

To put it in math terms:

$4,280,252,000 (Constellation B) minus $4,241,525,000 (Constellation A) = $38,727,000.

Thus, the $38.7 million figure cited by the Courier. It appears the Courier wrongly assumed that Constellation B was the option using JMB property and that it was the more expensive option. In fact, the opposite is true: Using the JMB property costs the public $38.7 million less.

And the cost of building the project along Santa Monica Boulevard? One option would be less expensive than using Constellation and one option would be more. Again, Metro staff do not believe Santa Monica Boulevard is a viable location for a tunnel and station because of seismic issues.

Metro will absolutely be paying to acquire parcels needed to construct the Westside Subway Extension and the agency will also be paying for easements for subway tunnels wherever they run under private property, whether it’s commercial or residential (here is a property acquisitions fact sheet). As per Federal Transit Administration guidelines, Metro has estimated the cost of property acquisition for the entire project. But information pertaining to future real estate negotiations with individual landowners, including potentially JMB Realty, are not disclosed until those negotiations conclude.

It is also worth noting that in correspondence with Metro, JMB Realty has requested that its property not be used as a construction staging area. The firm has also said it supports a subway station anywhere in Century City.

Finally, the Courier story intimates that JMB may be receiving a large payout due to its political contributions. JMB is a national company and is politically active — as are many individuals and businesses in the United States.

In all likelihood, there are politically active people and businesses along the entire Westside Subway Extension alignment, some of whom may benefit from having property near the subway or perhaps (if necessary) from negotiating an easement or property purchase with Metro. Metro has and will continue to try to build a project in compliance with all applicable regulatory requirements, that is within its budget and provides the most benefits possible to those who live and work in and visit Los Angeles County.

The update for the iPhone version of the app is now available for free from the iTunes store.

The Android version of the app also has the update.

To learn more about the app, see this previous post.

Southern California Gas Co. is warning its customers about a scam in which the culprits tell victims they can get credits on their utility bills if they provide information such as a Social Security number.

According to the gas company, scammers have visited customers in person, used social media sites and even sent text messages to victims claiming that President Barack Obama is offering a program of bill credits or direct payment of bills.

Gas Co. officials said workers for the utility always carry proper identification when visiting customers, and they do not randomly call or text customers asking for Social Security numbers or other personal information. Customers should verify a person's employment before allowing anyone into their home or providing any information, according to the company.

To verify the authenticity of anyone claiming to be a representative of SoCalGas, customers should ask for proper identification or call the utility at (800) 427-2200, or (800) 342-4545.

Stay connected with Hollywood Patch throughout the day on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to ourfree daily newsletter for email updates.

Research presented by Dr. Miles Kenney of Kenney Geoscience, a geotechnical firm hired by the district, along with Tim Buresh, a consultant of BHUSD who also serves as Southern California Regional Director of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, showed faults along Santa Monica Boulevard are most likely inactive and any in the Santa Monica Fault Zone are most likely secondary faults.

A Korean-American could become the first Asian-American on the Los Angeles City Council in 20 years.

BongHwan Kim, the general manager of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE), filed papers Friday to run for the Thirteenth District seat that will open next year when Eric Garcetti terms out.

DONE oversees the city's neighborhood councils, including budgeting and elections.

Read Kim's bio here.

"Government needs to do a better job of making sure that neighborhoods are more empowered," Kim said. "Working with neighborhoods is going to be one of the few ways that government is going to be able to survive these tough economic times, and I'm uniquely qualified to do that."

A number of candidates have already entered the race, including Silver Lake resident Scott Crawford, Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council president Jose Sigala, local activist and realtor Ruben Martinez and film editor Thomas Marshall Penick.

Two other candidates, Deputy U.S. Attorney Josh Post and former CD 13 staffer Mitchell O'Farrell, are regular bloggers on this site.

Kim told KPCC that the demographics of the district "are a great fit for my background."

According to KPCC, the newly redrawn Thirteenth District wil be 19 percent Asian-American, with 22 percent of eligible voters Asian.

The district itself includes Thai Town, Historic Filipinotown and parts of Koreatown, which has been looking for a stronger, unified voice in local politics. Many had unsucessfully lobbied to have the community incorporated in a single city council district in the recent redistricting.

Kim currently lives outside the district, in Glassell Park, which was eliminated from CD 13 in the recent redistricting.

KPCC says John Choi, a member of the city's Board of Public Works, and several other Asian-Americans may also run in District 13, where Mike Woo was the last Asian to hold a seat until 1993.

According to one report Emile Mack, a top executive in the Los Angeles Fire Department, has also filed the paperwork he needs to run.

Stay connected with Hollywood Patch throughout the day on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to our free daily newsletter for email updates.

Skywatchers in East Asia and the western United States should circle Sunday (May 20) on their calendars. That's when a solar eclipse will block out most of the sun, leaving a spectacular "ring of fire" shining in the sky for observers located along the eclipse's path.

The event is what's known as an annular solar eclipse — from the Latin "annulus," meaning "little ring" — and its full glory should be visible from much of Asia, the Pacific region and some of western North America, weather permitting. At its peak, the eclipse will block about 94 percent of the sun's light.

Other parts of the United States and Canada will still see a partial solar eclipse, without being treated to the ring of fire effect, though the East Coast will miss the event since the sun will have set before it begins. The eclipse will occur in the late afternoon or early evening of May 20 throughout North America, and May 21 for observers in Asia. Check out this eclipse skywatching guide to learn more about viewing locations and times.

This NASA graphic of the United States depicts the path of the annular solar eclipse of May 20, 2012, when the moon will cover about 94 percent of the sun's surface as seen from Earth.

Solar eclipses occur when the moon comes between Earth and the sun, casting a shadow on our planet. When the moon lines up perfectly with the sun and blots out all of its light, the result is a total eclipse. Partial eclipses cover only part of the sun's face. [Annular Solar Eclipse of May 20, 2012 (Photo Guide)]

Annular eclipses are similar to total eclipses in that the moon lines up with the sun dead-on. But in this case, the moon is close to apogee — the farthest point from Earth in its elliptical orbit around our planet — so it's a smidge too small in the sky to cover the solar disk completely. As a result, a ring of bright sunlight will still blaze around the moon's circumference.

Like other types of solar eclipses, annular eclipses are spectacular but potentially dangerous skywatching events. Care must be taken to observe them properly, or serious and permanent eye damage — including blindness — could result.

Warning: Never look directly at the sun, either with the naked eye or through telescopes or binoculars without the proper filters.

To safely observe the May 20 annular eclipse, you can buy special solar filters to fit over your equipment, or No. 14 welder's glass to wear over your eyes. Do NOT use standard sunglasses or any kind of homemade sun-shading contraption.

The safest and simplest technique is perhaps to watch the eclipse indirectly with the solar projection method. Use your telescope, or one side of your binoculars, to project a magnified image of the sun’s disk onto a shaded white piece of cardboard.

The image on the cardboard will be safe to view and photograph. Be sure to cover the telescope's finder scope or the unused half of the binoculars, however, and don't let anybody look through them.

And if you snap any good eclipse photos that you'd like to be considered for use in a story or gallery, send them to SPACE.com managing editor Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com.

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

• Solar Eclipses: An Observer's Guide (Infographic)
• May 2012 Solar Eclipse - Where, When and How To View it | Video
• Photos: Amazing Views of November 2011 Solar Eclipse

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

According to The Daily Truffle, Los Angeles mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti threw out the first ball at a polo match on May 6 at Will Rogers State Historic Park.

The event was a luncheon for members of The Supper Club, a social club with members in New York, Los Angeles, London and more. The match also served as a fundraiser for the current L.A. city councilman's campaign, said The Daily Truffle report.

• For the full story from The Daily Truffle, click here.
• For information about The Supper Club, click here.
• For a speech from Garcetti while at the event, click on the video player above.

A hearing was set this week for the public to weigh in on a proposed 1.54 percent rent increase at rent controlled units in Santa Monica.

Each year the city's Rent Control Board approves an increase to cover the costs a landlord pays to maintain the property, such as property taxes, utilities and business license fees. Last year, the board bumped the costs of rents by 3.2 percent.

The increase will take affect in September, and in most cases, will be borne by tenants. This year's public hearing will be held 7 p.m. June 14 in the City Council's chambers in City Hall, at 1685 Main St Main Street.

The proposal to raise rents by 1.54 percent is is based on the median cost of a rent-controlled apartment in Santa Monica, including those leased at market rates. As of April 2, the median was $1,395 per month—a substantially higher figure than what's been used since 1983.

Staffers have previously based their assessment on the average cost of rent when Santa Monica's rent control law took effect in 1979, $300, plus the approved annual rent increases over the past 30 years. Last year, that came to to $829.

"Staff believes [the new method] provides a more accurate analysis of rent-level reality in Santa Monica as of May 2012," Administrator Tracy Condon wrote in a memo to the Rent Control Board.

To ensure the new base number of $1,395 wouldn't result in an inflated rent increase, staffers weighted un-fixed costs for which they had no actual data, like self-labor and management, to be proportional to last year's base of $829.34.

To review a list of annual general adjustments authorized by the board since 1979, click here.

Read the Q&A on the Huffington Post to find out which Santa Monica vintage stores they frequent and other hotspots for good L.A. deals.

   Monday's ultraviolet index level in the Los Angeles area will be 10, according to the National Weather Service.
   The reading indicates what the UV exposure is expected to be at noon, when the sun's rays are at their strongest.
   A reading of 0-2 indicates a minimal exposure level, and very fair skinned people could become sunburned in 30 minutes if not properly protected.
   A reading of 3-4 is considered a low exposure level, reducing the danger range for those with fair complexions to 15-20 minutes if not protected.
   A moderate exposure level of 5-6 indicates that a person with a fair
complexion could be safe from sun burn for 10-12 minutes, unless protected.
   A high exposure level reading of 7-9 means that a person could be
sunburned in 7-8 minutes.
   A very high exposure level reading of 10, or greater, means a fair
skinned person could suffer a sunburn in about four minutes if not protected.
   Ultraviolet radiation is blamed for a host of health problems, including
skin cancer and cataracts.

An overriding goal for a team of engineers who worked on steam generators installed at the plant in 2009 and 2010 was minimizing wear and tear on the nearly 40,000 tubes that carry radioactive water inside the massive machines. Customized design and manufacturing promised years of reliable service for a plant that can power 1.4 million homes in Southern California.

But the opposite happened.

San Onofre’s twin reactors have been idle for more than three months in the midst of a federal probe into what went wrong with hundreds of tubes that snake through the generators. Some were so eroded after a brief run in operation they can no longer function safely.

Less than a month before a tube break in January prompted Southern California Edison to take the plant offline, engineers writing in a trade magazine touted a series of modifications to the generators that they believed would improve the plant’s dependability and longevity.

The first goal listed: reducing tube wear.

The article, published in Nuclear Engineering International, provides a detailed account of what the company was attempting to achieve with the new generators, and leaves a gaping question.

How did a design intended to reduce tube wear in numerous ways in this case increase it, in some cases rapidly?

Company spokeswoman Jennifer Manfre declined to comment on the cause of the unusual tube wear, saying an Edison analysis will be completed in time “according to engineering principles and science, not guessing or assumptions.”

The magazine article — written by a top-level Edison nuclear engineer, Boguslaw Olech, and Tomoyuki Inoue of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which manufactured the equipment — recounts the history of the original generators, which were pulled out of the plant more than a decade short of their expected lifespan of 40 years.

They were suffering from excessive tube wear, cracking and severe corrosion of supports that hold them in place. If too many tubes become worn and damaged, generators can become unsafe to operate and risk a potential tube break, which could release radiation.

The new generators, they said, “include all possible improvements introduced by the industry into the steam generator design and fabrication,” including incorporating the experience at San Onofre, where tube wear had been a major problem.

The goal was “improving longevity, reliability, performance and maintainability of the steam generators,” they wrote.

The trouble began to unfold in late January, when the Unit 3 reactor was shut down as a precaution after a tube break. Traces of radiation escaped, but officials said there was no danger to workers or neighbors.

Unit 2 had been taken offline earlier that month for routine maintenance and refueling, but investigators later found unusual wear on tubing in both units.

Gradual wear is common in such tubing, but the rate of erosion in some tubes at San Onofre alarmed officials since the equipment is relatively new. The company last week said more than 1,300 tubes are so damaged that they will be taken out of service, a far higher number than previously disclosed, but that number is well within the margin to allow the generators to keep operating.

In solving some problems with tubing at San Onofre, including using a new alloy, the engineers might have created others.

Test results show that two types of wear have occurred at both units — tubes are rubbing and vibrating against adjacent tubes, as well as against support structures inside the generators.

Federal and company investigators are trying to determine why that is happening, and company officials have yet to say if the root cause of the problem is related to design, improper installation or maintenance, or other issues.

An environmental group, Friends of the Earth, has claimed SCE misled the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about design changes that it identified as the likely culprit in excessive tube wear, a charge the federal agency disputes. Friends of the Earth released research that said nearly 400 additional tubes were added to each generator as part of design modifications that compromised safety.

The four massive steam generators at San Onofre — two per reactor, each with 9,727 alloy tubes — function something like a car radiator, which controls heat in the vehicle’s engine.

The generator tubes circulate hot, radioactive water from the reactors, which then heats a bath of non-radioactive water surrounding them. That makes steam, which is used to turn turbines to make electricity.

The tubes have to be thin enough to transfer heat, but thick enough to hold up under heavy pressure. And they represent a critical safety barrier — if a tube breaks, there is the potential that radioactivity can escape into the atmosphere. Also, serious leaks can drain protective cooling water from a reactor.

The engineers wrote that they needed to design generators that would require only minor modifications within the rest of the plant, but also meet a federal test to qualify as “in-kind,” or essentially identical, replacements, which would allow them to be installed without prior approval from federal regulators.

The article outlines a series of alterations that were made to meet the various benchmarks. Among the changes, the new generators used a different tube alloy believed to be more resistant to cracking. The engineers also designed V-shaped tube supports to minimize the potential for tube wear and vibration.

There have been confusing signals in recent days about the status of the double-domed plant, which overlooks a beach between Los Angeles and San Diego. Federal regulators have said the plant will remain shuttered until investigators determine the cause of the tube wear and repairs are made.

But earlier this month, a senior company executive said Edison was hoping for a June restart for at least one of the sidelined reactors. The company is drafting a plan under which the reactors would run at reduced power, during a test period of at least several months, because engineers believe that will solve a problem with vibration that the company suspects has been causing the unusual wear in the tubes.

That was followed by a blunt statement from Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko, who said it was “clearly premature” to discuss a restart. Later, SCE President Ron Litzinger appeared to agree, saying “there is no timeline on nuclear safety.”

(© Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — “Carmageddon 2″. “The Rampture”. “RampJam”. Whatever name you choose to call it, the sequel to last year’s partial closure of the 405 Freeway is set to debut next month.

Motorists in the West Los Angeles area are being urged to prepare for the extended closures of two freeway ramps in an effort to demolish and rebuild all on- and off-ramps along Wilshire Boulevard over the course of three months.

KNX 1070′s Ron Kilgore reports the project — which begins June 22 — is aimed at easing the flow of traffic at an interchange where one of the nation’s busiest boulevards meets the nation’s busiest freeway.

The Westbound Wilshire on- and off-ramps are the first ramps scheduled for 90-day closures.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky told KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO that after “multiple accidents over the years”, this project is long overdue.

“On- and off-ramps at Wilshire and the San Diego Freeway are the most dangerous on- and off-ramps in the United States,” said Yaroslavsky. “The people who drive that freeway understand that in order to get off the freeway, you have to cut in front of traffic that’s accelerating to get on the freeway.”

Yaroslavsky and officials with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro), Caltrans and Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) are urging the public to “Plan Ahead, Adjust Travel Times, or Share the Ride”.

This fact sheet from Metro shows the current ramp structure and how the interchange is expected to perform once construction is finished, with some closures lasting as few as 14 days.

Public transportation use soared to record levels last year when a section of the 405 Freeway through the Sepulveda Pass was closed for the project’s first phase.

The Venice Neighborhood Council will accept nominations for a replacement community officer until Tuesday and the council's board in June will elect a candidate to its board.

Two candidates already have submitted their applications. They include:

• Thomas R. Sauer. in his application, Sauer said that he is a certified public accountant. He listed "safety safety safety" as the three most pressing issues in Venice.

• Mark Rojas. In his application, Rojas said that he is the CEO of Sparkwave Media and a co-founder of the Venice Art Crawl. He listed preservation of Venice's history and culture; integration and representation of different interest groups and representation of the homeless while balancing safety needs as the three most pressing issues in Venice.

Applications for the position can be found right here and should be mailed to the council's chair of the Rules & Elections Committee Ira Koslaw at ira.koslow@venicenc.org by a deadline of 5 p.m. on May 15.

Candidates will be given three minutes to introduce themselves to the board during its May 15 meeting and the board will have two weeks to submit additional questions to the candidates by sending them to Koslow. The candidates will have one week to respond via email. The questions and answers will be posted on the councils Web site and sent to board members.

The election by the board will take place June 19 and the winner will be immediately seated as a voting board member.

The election is being held to replace Matt Kline, who was elected at the last board meeting to the executive position of community outreach officer. Kline, who organized the recent Silicon Beach Town Hall, replaced Marc Salzberg, who was elected vice president by the board after Carolyn Rios resigned from the post.

More details on the election, including applications submitted by the candidates can be found right here.