The four members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were scheduled to appear publicly on Thursday for a brief procedural vote about a California utility’s request to dismiss an antinuclear group’s request for a hearing about the Diablo Canyon Power Plant.
In what is known as an affirmation session, the commission members will briefly appear in public to certify that the record of a decision they have already made is correct. The public may watch the early-morning session online or attend at NRC headquarters in Rockville, Md., according to a Federal Register notice.
The commissioners’ votes on the underlying matter have not been made public, but NRC staff in September recommended that the commission throw out the environmental group’s request for a hearing about Avila Beach, Calif., plant’s on-site spent fuel storage facility, which plant owner Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) is trying to relicense as part of a broader drive to extend Diablo Canyon’s life to 2030 from 2025.
Staff made their recommendation after PG&E in August eliminated a plan to pay for upkeep of the spent fuel facility with money from Diablo Canyon’s decommissioning trust fund. In 2022, six months after PG&E filed a license renewal application for the spent fuel facility, California passed a law requiring PG&E to keep Diablo Canyon open, reversing the state’s 2018 decision to close the plant this decade.
So, the utility’s renewal application for the spent fuel facility hit NRC staffers’ desk while the utility was still legally obligated to shut the plant down. The environmental group, San Luis Obsipo Mothers for Peace, seized on that fact and parlayed it into a mandate by an NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board to hold a hearing.
PG&E in 2022 received billions of dollars in state and federal funds to keep Diablo Canyon open. The federal government is still formalizing its award, made under the civilian nuclear credit program created by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021: the first major non-COVID stimulus bill shepherded through Congress by President Joe Biden’s (D) administration.
San Luis Obsipo Mothers for Peace has raised at least four legal or quasi-legal challenges to the Diablo Canyon life extension. Aside from its attempt to slow or prohibit relicensing of the plant’s spent fuel facility, these include a state lawsuit, dismissed in August, an emergency petition to shut down one of the plant’s reactors, which NRC commissioners referred to staff in early October and a federal lawsuit that may be scheduled for oral arguments no earlier than January.
Meanwhile, PG&E has until Dec. 31 to file a license renewal application for Diablo Canyon’s two reactors. If the utility files later than that, the reactors’ NRC licenses could expire before commission staff finish reviewing the application.
