By John Stang
Pacific Gas & Electric said this week it is sticking to its schedule for closure of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant even as it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
“Throughout the Chapter 11 process we will continue to operate our electric and natural gas business as usual. There are no specific plans to sell or close Diablo Canyon early,” James Noonan, a spokesman for the California utility, said by email Tuesday.
In 2016, PG&E announced plans to retire Diablo Canyon’s two pressurized water reactors as their Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses expire in 2024 and 2025. The San Luis Obispo County facility is the last operating nuclear power plant in California.
The filing Tuesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California, from PG&E Corp. and power-operating subsidiary PG&E Co., was driven by liabilities of $30 billion or more connected to wildfires in the state in 2017 and 2018. PG&E’s transition lines and other equipment have been blamed for many of the fires.
The Diablo Canyon decommissioning trust fund currently has $3.2 billion, with the utility seeking permission from the California Public Utilities Commission to increase rates to provide another $1.6 billion it says it will need to complete cleanup. The commission is expected to take 12 to 18 months to rule on that matter. Noonan wrote that the bankruptcy should not affect those efforts.
So far, a decommissioning plan beyond 2025 has not been mapped out.
However, U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.) said in a letter Tuesday to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that his constituents “are deeply concerned about any impacts a bankruptcy could on the safe operations on the plant and the current decommissioning plans.”
Carbajal, whose congressional district covers San Luis Obispo County, focused on whether the NRC’s ensures the bankruptcy does not affect Diablo Canyon’s safety measures; that the bankruptcy doesn’t affect the decommissioning trust fund; and that it doesn’t affect the November 2024 and August 2025 reactor closure dates.
The NRC’s resident inspectors at Diablo Canyon will monitor the bankruptcy proceedings to determine if they might affect the safe operations of the reactors, agency spokesman Victor Dricks said Wednesday.
“No significant impacts on plant operations have been observed to date. The NRC has established processes and programs in place to inspect licensees as they move through the bankruptcy process and ensure that adequate public safety is maintained,” he stated by email.
The NRC will reply soon to Carbajal’s letter, Dricks wrote.
PG&E is the second mega-utility with commercial reactors to file for bankruptcy in the past 10 months. Ohio-based FirstEnergy Solutions filed for bankruptcy in March 2018, just days after announcing it would close its three nuclear power plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania by Oct. 31, 2021. FirstEnergy’s financial problems derived from the inability of its reactors and coal-fired power plants being unable to compete economically with electricity produced by natural gas.
PG&E’s woes are more directly drawn from its connection to wildfires in recent years in its areas of operation. In October and November 2018, out-of-control blazes ignited near Paradise, Calif., and in Northern California – the utility’s power lines being suspected as possible causes.
The Paradise fire — called the Camp Fire — killed 86 people and destroyed 13,972 homes, 528 commercial structures, and 4,293 other buildings while burning 153,336 acres, according to a PG&E filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Several Northern California fires killed 44 people, destroyed 8,900 buildings, and burned 245,000 acres — 22 of those deaths were in a fire that PG&E has been absolved of causing.
The company is seeking permission from the bankruptcy court to enter an agreement for $5.5 billion in debtor-in-possession financing with J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Barclays, Citi, BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, MUFG Union Bank and Wells Fargo, according to a company press release. “The DIP financing, when approved, will provide PG&E with necessary capital to ensure essential maintenance and continued investments in safety and reliability for the expected duration of the Chapter 11 cases.”
That money won’t affect any Diablo Canyon timetables, Noonan wrote.
No timetable has been set for resolving the bankruptcy matters, although it will put on hold any actions due to wildfire-related lawsuits.
