Antinuclear activists want the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to speed up oral arguments in a federal lawsuit aimed at blocking a life extension for California’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant.
The groups, San Luis Obsipo Mothers for Peace, Friends of the Earth and Environmental Working Group, asked the U.S. Ninth Circuit of Appeals bump the scheduled briefings in the case up about a month so that the final brief before arguments would be due Oct. 19.
The environmentalists’ aim, according to their unopposed motion for a scheduling change, is to get a ruling out of the appeals judge before Diablo Canyon unit 1’s reactor operating license with the NRC expires on Nov. 2, 2024. Unit 1 will have to shut down then, unless plant operator Pacific Gas & Electric submits a license renewal application to NRC by Dec. 31.
After receiving billions of dollars in financial aid from California and the federal government in 2022, Diablo Canyon operator Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) is trying to get a five-year extension for the plant’s two reactors.
The NRC has said there is likely less time remaining on the licenses than it would take the commission to vet the company’s renewal application, so the agency in February decided to let Diablo Canyon remain open beyond the expiration date of its licenses, as long as PG&E files a license renewal application by the end of the year.
In their lawsuit filed in April, the environmental groups said the commission’s decision was illegal.
“ The crux of the issue raised by Petitioners is whether the NRC has violated the Atomic Energy Act and the National Environmental Policy Act by granting an exemption that may permit PG&E to operate the Diablo Canyon reactors past their operating license expiration dates without allowing sufficient advance time to complete safety and environmental reviews and an adjudicatory hearing,” the environmentalists wrote in their May 31 motion.
The NRC and PG&E, an intervenor in the federal case, agreed to the expedited briefing and argument schedule, though the court had yet to rule on the environmentalists’ motion as of Tuesday.
If the judge in the case agrees with the environmentalists’ argument, it could force PG&E to shut down Diablo Canyon Unit 1 before the NRC has time to process the utility’s renewal application.
Until last year, PG&E had been handcuffed by a California law, repealed in 2022 as part of the state’s financial aid package to the plant, that essentially outlawed nuclear power in California until the federal government built a permanent nuclear waste repository.
Before that law passed in 2018, PG&E filed a license renewal application for both of Diablo Canyon’s reactors that the NRC could have vetted long before the existing licenses ran out. After the state law was passed, the company pulled that license renewal request with the NRC.
Following last year’s financial aid packages, PG&E tried to get the NRC to resume consideration of the withdrawn application, but the commission said no.
