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Department of Homeland Security Accused of Giving Tech Jobs to H-1B Guest-Workers

By JAMIE ROSS | Courthouse News | April 27, 2015

A recent Homeland Security regulation may replace American workers with the spouses of foreign workers in the country with H-4 visas, a group of former computer workers claim in court.

Save Jobs USA, a group made up of former Southern California Edison computer workers who were replaced by foreign workers on H-1B guest-worker visas, filed suit in D.C. Federal Court against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

According to the lawsuit, DHS implemented the “Employment Authorization for Certain H-4 Dependent Spouses” recently, which grants work authorization to certain spouses of foreign workers in the U.S. on H-4 visas.

“The H-4 Rule extends employment authorization to an alien possessing an H-4 visa who is the spouse of an H-1B alien who is the principal beneficiary of an approved Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker, or has been granted H-1B status extending beyond the normal 6-year term,” the complaint states.

As many as 179,600 new foreign workers will be added to the U.S. workforce in the first year of the rule, DHS says, with 55,000 added annually in the following years.

“The H-4 Rule is in excess of DHS authority and directly contradicts several provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act,” the lawsuit says.

The complaint details the struggles of Save Jobs USA member Brian Buchanan to find work after he was displaced by Edison with a H-1B worker supplied to the California energy provider by India-based Tata Consultancy Services. Tata Consultancy is the largest IT provider in India.

Buchanan, an IT specialist, says he was forced to train his H-1B replacement to perform his job after he was told he would be replaced.

“If Mr. Buchanan had not trained his replacement he would have been denied a severance package and could have been terminated with cause, making him ineligible for unemployment benefits,” the complaint states. Buchanan claims he now faces competition from H-1B Workers and soon H-4 visa holders to find a new job in the computer job market.

“This is a slap in the face to the tens of millions of Americans suffering from unemployment and underemployment, especially those who are most vulnerable such as students, seniors, single mothers and minorities,” said Dale L. Wilcox of the Immigration Reform Law Institute, which is representing Save Jobs USA. “The law states that foreign work permits cannot adversely affect American wages, but all we’ve seen during this administration is standards of living fall and outsized corporate profits continue to rise.”

Save Jobs USA seeks to stop DHS from authorizing spouses with an H-4 visa to work.

Southern California Edison’s alleged replacement of American workers with workers from India has been subject to criticism, including a bipartisan letter written by 10 U.S. senators asking the Labor Department to investigate into the legality of its actions.

Solicitor General M. Patricia Smith says in a letter to Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, that the agency “lacks a basis to initiate an investigation,” because the wage and hour division had not received a complaint. She referred the matter to the Office of Special Counsel.

“We will continue pressing the administration to use its legal authority to stop the displacement of American workers wherever possible and to conduct a thorough investigation of responsible parties,” Durbin and Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, said in a statement.

Southern California Edison denied that it was acting unlawfully, though, claiming that it is “transitioning some IT operations to external vendors.”

The Office of General Counsel could not be reached for comment.  

April 29, 2015 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

California’s San Onofre nuclear plant to shut down permanently – owner

RT | June 7, 2013

Southern California Edison (SCE) has decided to permanently retire two units of its San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) on California’s Pacific coast, Edison International said in a press release.

“SONGS has served this region for over 40 years,” said Ted Craver, Chair and CEO of Edison International, the parent company of SCE, “but we have concluded that the continuing uncertainty about when or if SONGS might return to service was not good for our customers, our investors, or the need to plan for our region’s long-term electricity needs.”

Units 2 and 3 of the troubled plant have been shut down since January 2012, when a radiation leak led to the discovery of significant damage to several generator tubes. Many feared that the worsening conditions at the atomic power station would result in a Fukushima-like meltdown in California.

The plant’s generators have been malfunctioning for months. Today’s decision to permanently shut down the twin-domed facility comes after the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Atomic Safety & Licensing Board ordered a hearing on Edison’s plan to restart Unit 2 at 70 percent of full power. The company’s officials claimed that operating the least-damaged reactor at that capacity would ensure its safety by reducing vibrations in the generator’s tubes.

It may take over a year for a final decision on the future of the reactor to be made, Edison said in its statement on Friday. It added that throughout that period the company will bear the costs of ensuring the reactor is prepared for a restart – a costly prospect for both the owner and its clients. SCE said it would rather focus its efforts on “planning for the replacement generation and transmission resources which will be required for grid reliability.”

The company also plans to reduce its current staff of about 1,500 to around 400 employees within the next 12 months, but vowed to handle the layoffs “fairly.”

It will take years to fully decommission the two San Onofre reactors. Edison said its “top priority will be to ensure a safe, orderly, and compliant retirement of these units.”

The US has 104 nuclear power reactors, 13 of which are currently being decommissioned, according to the NRC.

June 7, 2013 Posted by | Nuclear Power | , , , | Leave a comment

Nuclear station insider says San Onofre should stay closed

RT | April 30, 2013

A safety engineer from the San Onofre nuclear power plant has warned that “there is something grossly wrong” with the plant and that it faces the prospect of a full or partial meltdown if it is restarted

The safety engineer, who has worked in the nuclear field for 25 years, told ABC 10 that due to broken tubes carrying scalding water, there could easily be a main steam line break, which would cause the nuclear reactor core to overheat and result in a Fukushima-like meltdown.

The Los Angeles City Council last week demanded that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission refrain from making a decision about restarting the San Onofre unit until it conducts a “prudent, transparent and precautionary” investigation. Days after the unanimous city council decision, an insider from the San Onofre plant spoke to the media for the first time about the dangers associated with a restart.

“There is something grossly wrong,” the inside source told ABC, asking for anonymity because of fears for his safety.

Dr. Joe Hopenfeld, a former NRC employee, mirrored the insider’s fears, claiming that the manufacturer of San Onofre’s generators did not have experience in sizing the unit for the plant. In 2010 and 2011, San Onofre paid the Japanese manufacturer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) to build replacement generators, which were shut down in just 11 months due to a radiation leak.

“The manufacturer didn’t have experience in this size unit,” Hopenfeld told ABC. “I have reviewed thousands of pages of assessment and reports that Edison has submitted.”

Due to the leak, officials also discovered problems with the generator tubes carrying the hot water to and from the reactor core, which creates steam that turns the turbines and creates energy. The tubes operate under high pressure and are placed in rows, very close to one another. There is no protection between the tubes, resulting in many of them to hit each other and crack.

An NRC report found that of the 19,400 tubes, more than 17 percent were damaged. The cracking caused several tube failures, and the worst case scenario is a main steam line break, Hopenfeld and the insider explained.

“Many tubes, and I don’t know how many, have exhausted their fatigue life – they have no fatigue life left,” Hopefeld said.

With a main steam line break, the reactor core can quickly overheat and cause a Fukushima-like nuclear meltdown that would endanger the lives of those near the plant, which is located in San Diego County, Southern California.

“If an accident like this happens, (an) emergency plan is not geared to handle such a public safety devastation,” the inside source said. “Those things have never been practiced or demonstrated in a drill scenario.”

Officials at Southern California Edison, which owns the plant, have proposed a solution for a partial restart of the plant, claiming that operating Unit 2 at 70 percent capacity would ensure its safety by reducing the vibrations of the generator tubes. But Hofenfeld and the insider believe this would only reduce the risk – not diminish it.

“Maybe the vibrations wouldn’t be as severe, but it doesn’t mean they are going away,” Hopenfeld said.

“I am not trying to scare anybody — you can live there, but you should know what the risk is,” he added.

In the coming weeks, the NRC is expected to make a decision on whether or not the San Onofre nuclear power plant should be allowed to partially restart its operations. It has been out of service since January 2012.

May 1, 2013 Posted by | Nuclear Power | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Broken Nuke

By RUSSELL D. HOFFMAN | CounterPunch | July 11, 2012

San Onofre Nuclear (Waste) Generating Station has been shut down for nearly six months, ever since one of the heat transfer tubes inside their new steam generators in Reactor Unit 3 ruptured suddenly and unexpectedly.

The normal pressure difference from one side of the tube to the other is enormous: About 1,000 pounds per square inch, so even a tiny leak spews many gallons of “primary coolant” (which is highly radioactive) into the “secondary coolant loop” (which, ideally, is not radioactive at all).  When a leak occurs, the primary coolant flashes to steam as it exits the broken tube, and the steam is so hot it can cut through the tube like a welder’s torch, eventually cutting a complete circle around the tube, releasing it to fling around and damage other tubes.

There are nearly 10,000 U-shaped heat transfer tubes inside each steam generator.  They are about the thickness of a credit card and the diameter of your thumb.

Reactor Unit 2 was already shut down for massive repairs and refueling when Unit 3 sprang a leak.  Neither unit has operated since then (and the lights have remained on.  We do not need San Onofre).  An older reactor, Reactor Unit 1, was retired 20 years ago for basically the same reason, and has since been dismantled.  It’s time to dismantle Units 2 and 3, too.

SanO’s majority owner and operator, Southern California Edison, recently claimed to have identified the cause of Unit 3′s current problem as “fluid elastic instability”.  And although Unit 2 is of identical design and also has two new steam generators which are also experiencing excessive wear, SCE claims Unit 2 will not suffer the same problem if they restart it at reduced power.  SCE wants to do that next month, probably at half power, which does NOT mean the pressure differences and flow rates are half as much, because efficiency drops off substantially when the plant is not run at its maximum practical output (and so do profits for SCE!).

If Unit 2 runs without problems, they’ll bump the power up to 60%, then 70% and then 80%.  (So far that’s as high as they’ve said they’ll dare to go.)  Then they’ll start talking about restarting Unit 3 at reduced power as well.

If nothing ruptures, they’ll shut the reactor down periodically to check for wear, since they can’t tell what’s happening inside the steam generators while the reactor is operating.  The extra shutdowns are costly and hold additional dangers.  (The Nuclear Regulatory Commission keeps carefully track of how many times a reactor is cycled on and off.)

Restarting either SanO unit should be opposed by everyone in Southern California.  It’s not worth the risk.

Fluid elastic instability was first identified around 1970 and occurs when a fluid — usually a steam/water mixture (in this case mostly steam) flows across a bundle of tubes.  In the case of San Onofre, the steam/water mixture traverses the tubes at the U-portion of the tubes at their top.

A cascade of tube failures is substantially more likely under fluid elastic instability conditions than most other tube-rupture scenarios.  If a cascading tube failure occurs, the fact that SanO’s design has only two steam generators (whereas most Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs) have three or four) becomes an additional serious liability:  The second (only remaining) steam generator has to remove ALL the heat from the reactor.  Debris from the first steam generator failure may further complicate matters.

SCE was very reluctant to admit they’ve got a fluid elastic instability problem, and when they made a presentation to the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) last week, they didn’t try to explain what fluid elastic instability is.  They just said that it was apparently the problem.

However, the phenomenon is described in a 2001 ASME handbook on flow induced vibrations by M. K. Au-Yang:  Upon crossing the “critical velocity” the tube vibrations “suddenly rapidly increase without bound, until tube-to-tube impacting or other non-linear effects limit the tube motions.”  The vibrations: “become correlated and bear definite phase relationship to one another…”

In other words, the tubes rock back and forth together like people doing “the wave” or some other motion in a stadium.

Fluid elastic instability is difficult to model using computer simulations and SCE did not do full-scale modeling of the new steam generator design.  They also skipped full-scale hot testing after installing the new steam generators in 2010 and 2011.

When a tube started to leak in January 2012, the reactor operators did NOT suspect fluid elastic instability, and did NOT do the immediate prudent thing:  Shut down the reactor.

Instead, they kept running at full power until it was determined that the leak was growing — always a bad sign.  Permitted leakage rates, and total amounts, would have both soon been exceeded.  Normally, when the reactor is shut down for routine maintenance, faulty tubes are plugged. This process continues for the life of the plant or until so many tubes are plugged that the steam generators have to be replaced.  When the plant was built, it was believed that the steam generators would last the full life expectancy of the plant.  But throughout the nuclear industry, replacing steam generators has become a huge business.

Fluid elastic instability is relatively rare but is much more frightening than a typical steam generator tube leak.  Some leaks are left to spew, because rather than grow, they clog up with crud and stop spreading.  But growing leaks cannot be ignored.

Of the nearly 40,000 tubes inside the four new steam generators in the two operating reactors at San Onofre, more than 1,300 were found to have excessive wear to such a degree that they needed to be plugged.  About 10% of those were pressure-tested before being plugged, and eight failed the pressure tests — some failed at pressures BELOW standard operating pressure!

SCE officials are very reluctant to say how many tubes have failed in Unit 2, stressing that “only two” tubes indicated tube-to-tube wear, which, they feel, was probably caused by turbulence, not fluid elastic instability.  They aren’t certain, though, and just because fluid elastic instability hasn’t been experienced in Unit 2 yet, doesn’t mean it can’t happen there, either under normal operating conditions or during an emergency.

SCE has no idea when fluid elastic instability might occur.  Their computer models are known to have been off by 300 to 400 percent.  Flow rates are known to be way too high, and there is way too much steam and not nearly enough water at the top of the tubes (a mixture with more water would have been much better at dampening vibration).

Maybe SCE is right that lowering the power output will ensure safe operation.  But what if they’re wrong?  SCE wants to experiment with all our lives.

And let’s say they succeed.  Let’s say they get the reactors operating again.  Then, they will just go back to producing more spent fuel nuclear waste, a growing problem for which there is still no solution.  It will mean the next time there is an earthquake or a tsunami, San Onofre will threaten our farmlands, our cities, and our lives once again.  It will mean San Onofre will continue to threaten SoCal at least until the NRC relicenses the plant in 2022/2023, and then for 20 more years after that (and so on ad infinitum).   The NRC has never denied a nuclear power plant a license renewal in its history, and is especially unlikely to do so in California where new nuclear power plants are forbidden by state law.

San Onofre is shut down today because it was poorly designed, poorly constructed, and poorly operated.  Let’s keep it shut down.  It’s not going to get any better.

Russell D. Hoffman can be reached at: rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com

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July 11, 2012 Posted by | Nuclear Power | , , , , | Leave a comment