Holtec International gave Pacific Gas & Electric a piece of its mind last week in a letter blasting the utility for choosing another company to handle spent fuel management operations at a California nuclear power plant.
Pacific Gas & Electric’s (PG&E) April 6 decision to give the spent fuel job at Diablo Canyon Power Station to Orano USA subsidiary TN Americas was “shocking,” Holtec senior vice president and Chief Nuclear Officer Pierre Oneid told the utility in a letter dated the same day and posted on the plant’s community panel website.
Holtec has been handling the San Luis Obispo County, Calif., plant’s spent fuel inventory since 2000. Under the new contract, Orano would be responsible for defueling the plant and storing away its high-level waste after final shutdown in 2025.
Oneid raised concerns that Orano’s fuel storage cask design was “first-of-a-kind” and that it would require additional safety reviews by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before it could be put into action. Selecting an “unproven, unlicensed system for deployment in an ultra-high seismic area” does not meet PG&E’s previous commitments to safety, Oneid said. “Bluntly stated, PG&E’s decision reveals a blatant disregard for the interests and welfare of the host community of the San Luis Obispo area.”
A spokesperson for Orano didn’t return a request for comment by deadline Friday.
Holtec also took issue with PG&E’s bid process, which Oneid said was “conducted with little regard” to the quality of the company’s existing “road-tested” spent fuel project at Diablo Canyon.
“PG&E’s technically knowledgeable personnel appear to have been sidelined or muzzled and the body of PG&E’s literature on evaluation of the available technologies summarily buried,” Oneid said. The utility’s decision to award Orano the contract “is a preposterous and reprehensible act,” he said.
Holtec would consider contesting the award, Oneid said. A spokesperson for the company did not respond to a request for comment by deadline Friday on whether the company is planning to mount such a challenge.
Meanwhile, nuclear power advocates have been pressing PG&E and California to reverse the decision to shut Diablo Canyon down.
A coalition of scientists, entrepreneurs and other advocates including former energy secretary Steven Chu in February sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) urging him to keep the plant open. The letter cited a November study from a Stanford-Massachusetts Institute of Technology research team which found that Diablo Canyon could save the state tens of millions in power system costs.
PG&E has said that Diablo Canyon’s two reactors would shut down in 2024 and 2025, respectively. It’s the Golden State’s last operating nuclear power plant — the San Onofre, Rancho Seco and Humboldt Bay plants have all been shut down or decommissioned.
