The Nuclear Regulatory Commission established an Atomic Safety and Licensing Board to consider Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) Company’s application to extend the life of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant’s two nuclear reactors, the agency said in a Federal Register filing.
PG&E is seeking a 20-year license renewal for the reactors. The state of California has so far cleared the plant to operate for only five more years beyond the 2025 expiration of its second reactor’s current operating license.
NRC accepted PG&E’s renewal application in December. The NRC in January said it would take 20 months to process PG&E’s application. Environmental groups who want the plant shut down have opposed the restart in multiple forums, including at the NRC and in federal courts.
“Yucca Mountain licensing is a waste of time and money,” Robert Halstead, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects from 2011 to 2020, wrote in an op-ed that ran under that headline this week in the Las Vegas Sun.
Halstead wrote the op-ed in apparent answer to unidentified “[p]roponents of the project repeatedly [who] call for resuming and finishing the suspended licensing proceeding.” The op-ed also ran last week in the Reno Gazette-Journal.
During a panel discussion at the 2024 Waste Management Symposia, held this week in Phoenix, Kara Colton, director of nuclear policy of the Energy Communities Alliance, recited some verse she composed to summarize the history of U.S. efforts to find a home for spent nuclear fuel from civilian nuclear power plants.
Colton spoke on a panel titled “High-Level Waste Disposal in the USA: What’s Next?” during which panelists discussed the Department of Energy’s ongoing consent-based program for a future federal interim storage site. The text of Colton’s original, untitled poem follows:
1978, not so great.
2010, let’s do it again.
2013, what the hell’s consent mean?
2023, let consortia see.
