Happy Friday, nuke-watchers. Before we dive into the long weekend, here are a few other stories that RadWaste Monitor was tracking this week.
Diablo Canyon Host Community to Press Newsom on Plant Closure
Officials from the California community hosting the soon-to-close Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant will send a letter to the Golden State’s governor urging him to take action and prevent the site from shutting down following a vote this week.
The San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to send a letter to state Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on a 3-1 vote, with one recusal. Diablo Canyon, a dual-reactor nuclear plant operated by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), is slated to go completely offline by 2025.
The county board joins a cacophony of voices fighting to keep Diablo Canyon open. A Feb. 1 letter to Newsom signed by a coalition of experts including former energy secretary Steven Chu implored the governor to “at the very minimum” delay the plant’s closure.
“We are in a rush to decarbonize and hopefully save our planet from the worsening effects of climate change,” the letter said. “We categorically believe that shutting down Diablo Canyon in 2025 is at odds with this goal.”
Meanwhile, a November study conducted by Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology concluded that allowing Diablo Canyon to run through 2045 or later could save California roughly $21 million in power system costs.
The cause has even attracted celebrity attention — the musician Grimes, the professional name adopted by Claire Boucher, gave the plant a shout-out in a video posted to Twitter and said that shutting Diablo Canyon down would make California “reliant on fossil fuels.”
Diablo Canyon is the Golden State’s last operating nuclear power plant. The San Onofre, Rancho Seco and Humboldt Bay plants are all either under decommissioning or fully dismantled. PG&E has said that details about its plans to decommission Diablo Canyon are on the way, including information about whether the utility will dismantle the plant itself or contract that work out to a third party.
Lawmaker Urges NRC to Look Into Pilgrim Plant Wastewater Disposal
Another member of the Massachusetts congressional delegation chimed in on the ongoing debate over a decommissioning company’s plan for disposing of a Bay State nuclear plant’s wastewater, according to a recent letter from the lawmaker to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Rep. Bill Keating (D-Mass.) urged NRC in a letter, dated Jan. 28 and published by the agency Friday, to examine its regulations and assemble an interagency task force “to examine the lack of transparency and communication” surrounding Holtec International’s proposal to discharge irradiated water from Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station into the nearby Cape Cod Bay.
“Public perception of the release of irradiated material into the Cape Cod Bay must be considered when evaluating the proper method of disposal especially when there are cost effective alternatives available,” Keating said. “This is an environmental justice issue of the highest order for our community.”
Keating’s comments to NRC come as a coalition of Massachusetts lawmakers spearheaded by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) penned a letter to Holtec Jan. 11 urging the company to consider alternative disposal methods for the wastewater.
Holtec, for its part, has said that it will not release any water from the Plymouth, Mass., Pilgrim plant into the bay in 2022. However, president of the company’s decommissioning arm, Kelly Trice, said Jan. 27 that while it was considering other disposal options, such as evaporation or offsite transport, discharge would “likely” still be part of Holtec’s eventual plan.
Another Round of Pandemic-Related Regs Exemptions for Nuke Plants
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued several more regulatory exemptions to nuclear power plants expecting staffing shortages last month as the COVID-19 Omicron variant neared its peak, the agency said this week.
Clinton Power Station in Illinois, Davis-Besse in Ohio, Palo Verde in Arizona and New Jersey’s Hope Creek and Salem plants all got relief from NRC’s employee work-hour requirements in January, the agency said in a Federal Register notice published Friday. The plants’ operators requested those accommodations because all “have stated that their staffing levels are affected or are expected to be affected” by COVID-19, NRC said.
The commission has issued a number of similar exemptions to nuclear plants throughout the ongoing pandemic — most recently in December.
