The Nuclear Regulatory Commission shouldn’t have tossed a coalition of watchdog groups’ request for a public hearing on a license extension for a nuclear power plant in Virginia, according to an appeal filed with the agency Friday.
NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board erred when it ruled that concerns about the safety of a 20-year renewal to North Anna Nuclear Generating station’s license — raised by Beyond Nuclear, Alliance for Progressive Virginia and the Sierra Club — were not persuasive enough to warrant a public hearing, the groups said in the Friday appeal.
The watchdog groups in December argued that Dominion Energy subsidiary Virginia Electric and Power Co. (VEPCO) violated federal law by not “addressing the environmental significance” of a 2011 earthquake when applying for the license extension with the commission. Mineral, Va., where North Anna is located, was the epicenter of the 5.8 magnitude quake. The earthquake “fatally undermined previous NRC generic environmental findings” which VEPCO, used in its license extension application, Friday’s appeal said.
“If the ASLB’s erroneous decision is allowed to stand, North Anna 1 and 2 would be allowed to operate for twenty more years with aging safety equipment whose design has now been demonstrated by the Mineral Earthquake to be inadequate to protect against significant adverse environmental impacts,” the appeal said.
At deadline Tuesday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, the commission had not responded to the appeal.
Dominion first applied to get a license extension for North Anna, located about 100 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., back in August.
The country’s aging nuclear fleet is the subject of national attention. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) penned a letter to President Joe Biden last week urging his administration to focus on preventing further plant closures. There are four nuclear plants with a combined generating capacity of 5.1 gigawatts slated to shut down this year: two in Illinois, one in Michigan, and another in New York State.
