The San Luis Obispo County Board on Wednesday passed a resolution supporting a life extension for the local Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant by a vote of 3-2.
Voting yes were Supervisors Dawn Ortiz-Legg (District 3), Debbie Arnold, the chair, (District 5) and John Peschong (District 1).
Voting no were Supervisors Bruce Gibson (District 2) and Jimmy Paulding (District 4).
The meeting this week in San Luis Obispo was broadcast via the board’s website. The resolution does not affect plans by California or plant owner Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) to keep Diablo Canyon running until 2030 instead of shutting it down in 2025, but it does provide a show of community support for the project.
The board passed the resolution after about an hour of comments from the public and debate among the five supervisors.
The county board’s resolution faced opposition this week from a California lawmaker who helped craft the state law that bailed out the plant in 2022.
In a letter to the board, California State Sen. John Laird (D), whose district includes Santa Cruz and San Luis counties, said the resolution was premature and that PG&E had not completed a safety analysis of Diablo Canyon Unit 1. Environmentalists have said the reactor is unacceptably brittle. A former NRC employee hired by the board said it is not.
Members of the public including Dolores Howard, a member of the local chapter of the Sierra Club, referenced the letter at Tuesday’s meeting. The San Luis Obispo Tribune newspaper also referenced the letter in an opinion piece published this week by its editorial board. The Tribune urged the board of supervisors to postpone a vote on the resolution.
Although California, via legislation passed in 2022, has approved a five-year extension for Diablo Canyon and its two reactors, PG&E has applied for a 20-year license extension with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The commission in February said it would need until August 2205 to review the license extension request, more time than Diablo Canyon Unit 1 has left on its federal operating license and potentially more time than Unit 2 has.
NRC gave PG&E a grace period to keep the reactors on for as long as the license review takes, but antinuclear groups who say this is illegal sued the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in federal court. In January, a panel of three circuit court judges heard arguments in environmentalists’ lawsuit but had not issued a decision as of deadline for RadWaste Monitor.
This week, the antinuclear groups started a gofundme campaign to raise $500,000 for legal expenses associated with the suit.
