Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. announced this week it applied with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to extend the operating license of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant.
In line with expectations, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) wants to keep the reactors on until 2030, according to a Tuesday press release. The NRC license renewal the utility seeks would allow the plant to stay online for 20 years.
The plant in Avila Beach, Calif., now “will continue to operate until the NRC has taken final action on PG&E’s application,” the utility wrote in its release.
PG&E’s operating licenses for the plant’s Unit 1 and Unit 2 reactors expire on Nov. 2, 2024 and Aug. 26 2025, respectively. The NRC has said it might take longer than that to review a renewal application but that the reactors could stay online past the expiration dates if the utility filed for a license extension before Dec. 31.
It takes NRC staff a little less than two years to review a typical license renewal application, the agency wrote in March in a press release announcing PG&E’s New Years Eve deadline.
“The staff will take up to 45 days to conduct an acceptance check to determine if the application is complete enough for a full technical review,” an NRC spokesperson wrote in an email on Wednesday. “Once that decision is reached, the agency will also decide whether PG&E has met the conditions for the timely renewal exemption. If the staff concludes a full review is warranted, we will provide our timeline estimate at that point.”
The commission did not immediately release PG&E’s renewal application, but “[w]e are checking the application for protected information and will make it publicly available when that check is complete,” the spokesperson said.
California in 2022 reversed a 2018 law requiring PG&E to shut down Diablo Canyon when its current operating licenses expire. The state and the federal government combined to provide about $2 billion in financial aid to keep the plant open.
Local and environmental groups have fought the proposed license extension in multiple forums and still have two live challenges to the life-extension. One is scheduled for arguments in a federal court in January. Another, filed with the NRC itself, is under review by commission staff. In their latest agency-level challenges, local activists claim Diablo Canyon’s Unit 1 reactor is dangerously brittle.
PG&E has said the activist’ claims about embrittlement rely on unproven, experimental methods.