Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff on July 17 will hold a virtual public meeting about a California-based environmental group’s request to shut down the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, the commission said June 21.
The comment-gathering meeting was scheduled to begin at 3:00 p.m. Eastern time. The public may join via Microsoft Teams to observe interactions between staff in the commission’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation and the environmentalists and their attorneys, according to NRC’s website.
In March, the anti-nuclear group San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace petitioned NRC to shut down Diablo Canyon, which California and the federal government in 2021 gave a combined $2 billion to remain open for five more years, because of what the group in its petition called “unacceptable seismic risk.”
Mothers for Peace has tried several tactics to stop the Daiblo Canyon life extension, including a federal lawsuit that it lost in April.
The state has authorized Diablo Canyon and its two reactors to stay open until 2030, though plant operator Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) has filed for a 20-year license renewal with the NRC.
The commission has said the review could take about two years, or until roughly a month after PG&E’s operating license for Diablo Canyon Unit 2 expires. NRC is letting Diablo Canyon keep Diablo Canyon’s reactors online while the agency reviews the utility’s license renewal application.
California in 2022 passed a law requiring PG&E to keep Diablo Canyon open, reversing a 2018 state law that required the utility to close the plant in 2025, when the operating license on the second of its two reactors will expire.
