Twenty-year extension request for Diablo Canyon coming, PG&E says

Recently, Pacific Gas and Electric formally communicated to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it intends to apply for a license extension that could keep the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant operating into the 2060s.

By Dec. 31, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) will ask NRC to extend Diablo Canyon’s two reactors “for up to 20 years of additional operation,” Maureen Zawalick, Pacific Gas & Electric’s vice president of business and technical services wrote in a letter, dated Aug. 10, to NRC’s Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards.

The reactors would not necessarily operate for a further two decades beyond those dates even if NRC grants the extension, but an extension could give California a way to avoid the tight spot PG&E is in now with the NRC if the state decides it needs nuclear power beyond Oct. 31, 2030: the date by which Diablo Canyon Unit 2 would shut down, under a state law passed in July.

Today, Diablo Canyon Unit 1 is licensed to operate into November 2024. Unit 2 is licensed until August 2025. 

In 2022, the state of California reversed a 2018 decision to close Diablo Canyon down when its reactors’ operating licenses expired. The state and the federal government then provided billions of dollars in financial aid to extend the plant’s operating life.

But soon after the bailout, the NRC said that it would likely take the commission more time to process a license renewal application for the two reactors than the reactors had left on their licenses. 

So, in March, NRC said PG&E could keep the reactors online after their operating licenses expire, provided that the utility submitted license renewal applications by Dec. 31, 2023.