Most of the Democratic candidates running for the nomination to fill the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by Dianne Feinstein’s death in September do not support a life extension for the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in deep-blue California.
In a televised debate Wednesday, a recording of which Los Angeles’ local NBC affiliate posted on YouTube, front runner Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said he “support[s] the governor’s plan to decommission the plant.” The other two Democrats in the debate, Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Katherine Porter (D-Calif.), each said they do not support a life-extension. California’s government seeks a five-year extension.
The only other candidate on the debate stage this week, Republican Steve Garvey, a former all-star first baseman for both the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres of Major League Baseball, said only that “the people will decide” Diablo Canyon’s fate. The primary election to fill Feinstein’s seat is March 5. The top-two finishers in the nonpartisan primary will face off in the general election on Nov. 5.
Virtually all of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s employees do at least a little teleworking, according to a statement the agency released and posted online in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed in January by Colin Aamot, a former congressional staffer now working as a contributor to the conservative publication the Daily Signal. Aamot identified himself in his request as a member of the news media.
According to NRC’s response to the request, there were “2,620 NRC employees with active Telework Agreements in place as of January 1, 2024.” On its website, the NRC said it “ employs about 3,000 people.”
The East Riding of Yorkshire Council this week withdrew from a working group intended to educate the local population of about the possible construction of a deep-geologic repository for nuclear waste in South Holderness, in the county of East Riding of Yorkshire in east-central England between the Humber River and North Sea coast.
In a statement Thursday, the United Kingdom-owned Nuclear Waste Services said it “fully respects the council’s decision to withdraw from the GDF [geological disposal facility] siting process” and that it will now disband the working group, which it created only about a month ago.
Holtec International, Jupiter Fla., and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts this week averted a courtroom showdown over the company’s allegedly improper handling of asbestos during the demolition of the Pilgrim Nuclear Station in Plymouth, Mass.
The parties on Wednesday told the court they had agreed on a consent judgment that resolved the civil complaint Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell brought against the company last week in the state’s Superior Court for Suffolk County. Holtec bought Pilgrim from Entergy Corp. in 2019, when the facility was shut down.
The company has clashed with the state on other issues too, notably a decision last year to forbid the discharge of radioactive waste water from plant decommissioning into Cape Cod Bay. Holtec said the state’s decision is preempted by federal law and could delay the partial release of the Pilgrim site for years.
