The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said this week that it has lifted some environmental quality assurance requirements for a shuttered California nuclear power plant now that decommissioning work at the facility has wrapped up.
In its Oct. 11 order, announced in a Federal Register notice Wednesday, NRC exempted Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) from regulations that required it to submit annual reports on liquid waste discharges from Humboldt Bay Power Plant’s independent spent fuel storage installation.
PG&E completed the final phase of decommissioning at the Eureka, Calif., Humboldt Bay in November 2021. The former plant’s fuel storage site, which got a 40-year license extension from NRC in 2020, is host to around 390 spent fuel assemblies.
The commission on Wednesday said it had also altered and removed other conditions of Humboldt Bay’s license — such as a required safety analysis report for operating facilities seeking a license extension — that are “no longer applicable” now that the plant is fully decommissioned.
PG&E started decommissioning Humboldt Bay Unit 3 in 2008. The plant operated from 1963 to 1976, when it shut down for upgrades and never reopened.
There is currently just one operating nuclear power plant in California — Diablo Canyon Power Plant in Avila Beach, Calif. That facility, also operated by PG&E, was slated for closure by 2025. Fortunes were reversed in November, however, when the plant received a roughly $1.1 billion bailout from the Department of Energy as part of the agency’s civil nuclear credits program.
