The Nuclear Regulatory Commission illegally rejected a request for a hearing about the Unit 1 reactor vessel at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, environmental groups said this week in a new lawsuit.
Friends of the Earth and Mothers for Peace filed their lawsuit, the second federal suit the groups have brought against the commission over Diablo Canyon, on Thursday the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, according to a press release.
It is the latest in a succession of legal actions the groups have taken to prevent California and plant owner Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) from keeping Diablo Canyon open until at least 2030: five years after the current operating licenses for its two reactors are set to expire.
Friends of the Earth and Mothers for Peace filed their suit after the four serving commissioners of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission refused to personally convene a hearing about the groups’ claim that Unit 1’s reactor vessel was unacceptably brittle and should be shut down immediately.
The groups sought a hearing in September, but the commissioners in early October turned the environmentalists’ complaint over to NRC staff. PG&E has said the environmentalists’ claims are based on experimental methods used by a PhD staff researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.
Meanwhile, the environmentalists and NRC are due in court Jan. 10 for oral arguments in the groups’ first federal lawsuit over Diablo Canyon. In that suit, Friends of the Earth and Mothers for Peace said that NRC is illegally allowing the plant to stay open beyond the expiration date of its operating licenses.
Diablo Canyon’s Unit 1 and Unit 2 reactors are respectively licensed by the NRC to operate until Nov. 2, 2024 and Aug. 26, 2025, but commission staff have said it might take them longer than that to review PG&E’s license renewal application.
PG&E filed for renewal in early November. In 2022, California reversed a state law requiring Diablo Canyon to close in 2025. The state and federal government then combined to give the plant a roughly $2-billion bailout.
