Happy Friday and happy belated Veterans Day, fellow nuke-watchers. Before the weekend begins, here are some other updates from around the civilian nuclear power space that RadWaste Monitor was tracking this week.
Keeping Diablo Canyon Open Could Reduce Emissions, Save Billions, Stanford Study Says
The state of California could significantly reduce its carbon emissions and save billions in grid operating costs if it delayed the closure of one of its last remaining nuclear power plants, according to a university report published this week.
If Diablo Canyon Power Plant remained open until 2035 it could reduce California’s power sector carbon emissions by more than 10% from 2017 levels and save the state around $2.6 billion in power system costs, researchers from Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and consulting company LucidCatalyst said in the report published Monday. Pushing the San Luis Obispo County, Calif., plant’s closure back to 2045 or later could push cost savings up to roughly $21 billion, the report said.
Keeping the lights on at Diablo Canyon would also mean the plant could be used as a “polygeneration facility” producing electricity, desalinated water and clean hydrogen, the report said.
These findings arrive as Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), which owns and operates Diablo Canyon, is preparing to soon roll out the site’s decommissioning plan. A company executive said Nov. 1 that “several major announcements” about decommissioning work were on the way in the next 90 days or so.
The license for Diablo Canyon’s Unit 1 reactor runs through 2024, and Unit 2’s license is set to expire the following year. PG&E has said that decommissioning would begin right away and last about ten years.
Diablo Canyon is California’s last operating nuclear power plant. The state’s other three former plants, San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), Humboldt Bay and Rancho Seco, are all either in the midst of decommissioning or already dismantled.
Enviros Might Need to File a Fresh Petition in Texas Interim Storage Lawsuit, Court Says
Now that a proposed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel has a federal license, a coalition of anti-nuclear groups might need to file a new legal complaint, a judge said this week.
Although the anti-nukers, headlined by Beyond Nuclear, filed an amended petition Monday challenging the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing of Interim Storage Partners’ (ISP) proposed site, the parties involved in the case should decide whether a new complaint is necessary for the D.C. circuit court of appeals to review the licensing decision, a judge said Wednesday. The initial joint petition asked the court to roll back ISP’s license application before NRC could approve it.
ISP, a joint venture between Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists (WCS) and Orano USA, plans to build its interim storage site at WCS’s existing low-level waste facility in Andrews, Texas. NRC licensed the project in September.
The court Wednesday also approved a proposed schedule for proceedings, which would see final briefings from all parties due by June 2022. Initial arguments are due by Jan. 20.
The anti-nukers’ case against interim storage is spinning up once again after a long hiatus — proceedings have been on hold since March as NRC worked on licensing.
Other legal challenges to ISP’s proposed site have cropped up in recent months. Texas attorney general Ken Paxton’s suit against the project is currently pending in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals as the court reviews NRC’s motion to scrap the case. At deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor there hadn’t been any new movement on that docket.
Entergy Taps Commodities VP Green for Treasurer
Entergy, New Orleans, will have a new-old finance exec come spring, the utilities company announced this week.
Barrett Green, currently vice president of operations for Entergy’s wholesale commodities division, will become the company’s new treasurer effective early 2022, according to a press release Monday. Green is replacing current treasurer Steve McNeal, who plans to retire in the spring.
Green has been working at Entergy since 1997, the release said. He holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Mississippi, a master’s degree in engineering from Virginia Tech and a master’s degree in business administration from Northwestern University.
Entergy operates around 7,000 megawatts of nuclear power across six plants, including Michigan’s Palisades plant which is slated to shut down early next year. The company also operated Indian Point Energy Center in New York, which it sold to Holtec International for decommissioning in 2019.
The Canadian Nuclear safety Commission recently approved a license amendment that will let Laurentis Energy Partners and BWXT Medical Ltd. produce the medical isotope Molybdenum-99 in Ontario, Laurentis said in a press release this week.
Laurentis will oversee production at the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station, owned and operated by the company’s parent, Ontario Power Generation, the company said.
