Environmental groups this week requested a hearing over Pacific Gas & Electric’s plan to renew its Nuclear Regulatory Commission operating licenses for the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant’s two reactors.
San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, Friends of the Earth and Environmental Working Group filed their hearing request on Monday. The state of California has ordered Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) to keep the reactors running until about 2030, five years after their operating licenses were set to expire.
The environmental groups, which are also suing the NRC over the proposed restart, this week filed three new contentions: that continued operation of the plant “poses an unacceptable safety risk and significant adverse environmental impact of seismic core damage accidents;” that “PG&E fails to provide an adequate plan to monitor and manage the effects of aging on Unit 1 reactor pressure vessel; and that the utility “fails to demonstrate compliance with the coastal zone management act,” a federal environmental law.
The NRC had not granted or denied the hearing request as of Friday. The groups also have a lawsuit over the proposed restart pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which heard oral arguments in the case on Jan. 10 but had not issued any decision as of Friday morning.
The environmentalists have also argued that Diablo Canyon Unit 1’s reactor has become unacceptably brittle, a characterization that a state-chartered consultant and former NRC employee has disputed.
Pacific Gas & Electric last year filed for a license extension for Diablo Canyon’s Unit 1 and Unit 2 reactors, which will respectively expire on Nov. 2, 2024 and Aug. 26 2025. NRC has said it will let the plants stay open at least until the commission finishes its review of PG&E’s application, something the commission in January estimated would take until August 2025.
PG&E in 2022 received billions of dollars in state and federal bailouts to keep the plant open after California decided to reverse a 2018 decision to let the plant close down when its current operating licenses expire.
The state, through the California Public Utilities Commission, has approved only a five-year life extension, though the NRC license extensions PG&E seeks would be good for 20 years.
