In some of the first public details about decommissioning work at California’s last operating nuclear plant, Orano USA announced Wednesday that it had locked down a contract to transfer the site’s spent fuel into dry storage post-shutdown.
Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), which owns and operates Diablo Canyon Power Plant, selected Orano USA subsidiary TN Americas to “offload and transfer all used nuclear fuel and Greater than Class C (GTCC) waste” at the site after the scheduled final shutdown in August 2025, the company said in a press release Wednesday. Orano will design and build Diablo Canyon’s spent fuel and GTCC storage facilities and move fuel from wet storage in pools to dry cask storage on the pad, the release said.
“We are looking forward to performing another safe and efficient pool offload at Diablo Canyon,” Orano USA CEO Amir Vexler said in the statement. “Our expert teams have successfully performed this work at several other shutdown reactors, exceeding customers’ expectations and without regulatory issues.”
Orano projected that spent fuel transfer operations at Diablo Canyon would be complete two years after reactor shutdown.
PG&E’s plan to close Diablo Canyon, located in San Luis Obispo County, Calif., has been hotly contested by nuclear advocates and local stakeholders.
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 undo the plant’s closure. The letter cited a November study from a Stanford-Massachusetts Institute of Technology research team which found that keeping Diablo Canyon open could save the state tens of millions in power system costs.
