California waded into a lawsuit filed by environmental groups opposed to a life-extension for the state’s last nuclear power plant, writing in a legal filing last week that the plan “presents no undue risk” to the public.
In a friend-of-the court brief uploaded Friday and dated Sept. 5, California asked the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to deny a petition to block a five-year life extension for the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in Avila Beach, Calif.
The groups, led by San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, sued the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in April but have no basis on which to oppose keeping Diablo Canyon’s two reactors operating until 2030 or so, the state wrote in the amicus brief.
During the life-extension, the NRC and numerous state agencies will retain their oversight of the plant’s two reactors, which are currently licensed to operate until 2024 and 2025, California wrote.
If the NRC does approve an extension, the state would require plant operator Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) to contribute annually to reports about whether California still needs Diablo Canyon, which according to the state’s brief accounts for about about 9% of California’s total and about 17% of its carbon-free electricity.
Besides, the state said in its brief, “there exist numerous off-ramps at the state level if an aspect of Diablo Canyon’s continued operations does not satisfy applicable state standards.”
Once PG&E files its license renewal application with the NRC, the process “would likely move more quickly than a typical license renewal application because of the work accomplished between 2009 and 2018, before PG&E withdrew its prior renewal application,” the state wrote in its brief. In 2022, California repealed a law, passed in 2018, that essentially banned nuclear power in the state.
Usually, nuclear plant operators try to file for renewal five years before their licenses expire. Doing so automatically triggers an NRC rule that keeps the licenses active beyond their expiration dates, preventing a scenario where the commission needs more time to process the renewal application than remains on the license.
In PG&E’s case, that was impossible because California only passed a law to keep Diablo Canyon open a year ago. The commission responded by exercising its legal authority to let PG&E keep the reactors on beyond their license expiration dates as long as the utility applies for renewal by Dec. 31.
The Ninth Circuit lawsuit is one of several legal challenges environmental groups have filed this year to stop Diablo Canyon from reopening. So far, it has been mostly setbacks for the antinuclear activists.
Last week, NRC staff recommended that a commission board throw out a challenge, led by Friends of the Earth, to a license renewal for Diablo Canyon’s independent spent fuel storage facility.
In early September, a California state judge struck down a lawsuit brought by environmental groups who alleged that a Diablo Canyon life extension would breach a contract they had with PG&E.
