Part 1 of 2 Parts
Nuclear power has had a renaissance within the last decade. With more focus on combatting climate change, there has been an increased interest in all types of energy, even if it’s not renewable.
U.S. President Joe Biden set a goal to decarbonize the power grid by 2035. His administration sees nuclear power as a critical component of that. In California, there is a bigger thirst for power combined with increasing drought reducing the amount of hydroelectric power. As a result, nuclear energy began to get the attention of Governor Gavin Newsom as well.
In 2022, Newsom worked with state lawmakers to get California Senate Bill 846 passed. It agreed to lend Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) one billion four hundred million dollars and help with the process if PG&E would agree to change course and request a license renewal for the Diablo Canyon Power Plant.
Maureen Zawalick is the Vice President of Business and Technical Services at Diablo Canyon Power Plant. She said, “So we were affectionately known as Team Pivot. No other nuclear plant done this, and because we'd been operating so safely, continuing to invest in the plant for reliability and so forth, it wasn't too difficult of a pivot.”
With approvals from multiple regulatory bodies and agencies hanging in the balance, time is running out. In less than two years, the decommissioning process is set to begin. The first step is an approval was the California Public Utilities Commission.
Zawalick explained, “So they just approved us to go to 2029 and 2030, and that's, you know, our funding source through that mechanism. The California State Lands Commission, the permits, they're now extended to 2029 to 2030. Any permits we need from the California Coastal Commission? We'll navigate through that.”
She continued, “The approval came with some conditions. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) must continue to authorize the plant to operate, the utility must secure and maintain a $1.1 billion federal loan (which was approved by the Biden Administration), and the Public Utilities Commission cannot make a future determination that extended plant operations ‘are imprudent or unreasonable’.”
With regard to the NRC, if a nuclear power plant applies for licensure within a “reasonable” time and the license application is deemed complete, the plant can continue to operate during application review even if the current license has expired.
The NRC accepted PG&E’s application to restart the plant in December of 2023. This will allow the plant to continue generating electricity past its current license expiration later this year for Unit 1 and next year for Unit 2. The PG&E application asked for a 20-year extension.
Zawalick said, “The NRC process and their regulation looks at it from a 20-year time frame, from an environmental standpoint and from aging management and from a safety perspective. Okay, so there's a tremendous benefit of asking for 20 years with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission per their process, because it gives maximum optionality for the state.”
Please read Part 2 next