The Department of Energy said Friday it cleared a paperwork hurdle for a planned five-year extension of California’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant by adopting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s environmental reviews of the plant.
DOE had a duty under federal law to do environmental diligence on Diablo Canyon after the department in 2022 agreed to provide nearly $1 billion in financial aid to the plant, DOE wrote in a Federal Register notice published Friday.
To that end, the agency reviewed and adopted four Nuclear Regulatory Commission environmental reviews and one Atomic Energy Commission review of the dual-reactor plant in in Avila Beach, Calif.:
- The Atomic Energy Commission Final Environmental Statement related to the Nuclear Generating Station Diablo Canyon Units 1 & 2.
- NRC’s Addendum to the Final Environmental Statement for the Operation of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant Units 1 & 2 (NRC 1976).
- NRC’s Pacific Gas and Electric Company Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, Units 1 and 2 Notice of Issuance of Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact (NRC 1993).
- NRC’s Environmental Assessment Related to the Construction and Operation of the Diablo Canyon Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (NRC 2003).
- NRC’s Supplement to the Environmental Assessment and Final Finding of No Significant Impact Related to the Construction and Operation of the Diablo Canyon Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (NRC 2007).
Diablo Canyon’s two reactors were supposed to shut down in 2024 and 2025 but in 2022, the state of California and DOE provided billions of dollars in financial aid to keep the plant running into the 2030s.
DOE’s share, provisionally approved in November, came from the civilian nuclear credits program authorized and funded by the first part of the Joe Biden administration’s stimulus plan, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
To finalize the financial aid for plant owner Pacific Gas and Electric, which will be paid out over four years from 2023 to 2026, DOE had to “evaluate the environmental impacts” of keeping Diablo Canyon open, the agency wrote in the recent Federal Register notice.
NRC is the sole federal regulator for civilian nuclear power plants and has responsibility for federal environmental reviews of those plants.
Pacific Gas and Electric has until Dec. 31 to submit a license renewal application with the NRC for Diablo Canyon. If it does not, the operating licenses for the plant’s reactors could expire before the NRC has time to process the renewal application.
Environmental groups and antinuclear activists are fighting the planned license extension with the NRC and in state and federal courts. Neither the administrative proceedings at the agency nor the court cases had resulted in delay to Pacific Gas and Electric’s relicensing plans as of deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor.
