Diablo Canyon Cleared to Operate Through 2045 

The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant just received federal approval to keep the lights on for another two decades.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued utility company PG&E, the plant’s operator, a 20-year operating license on Thursday. Its license now stretches until 2045. 

However, PG&E only recently received state approval to keep the plant open until 2030. It will also have to get permission from the state legislature if it wants to extend operations for another 15 years on top of that. The state has only authorized Diablo’s Unit 1 nuclear reactor to stay open until 2029 and Unit 2 until 2030. 

That detail didn’t stop the celebration at a license-renewal-signing ceremony on Thursday.

“I am so excited my heart is just going to pop out of my chest,” PG&E senior vice president and chief nuclear officer Paula Gerfen said during the Thursday conference. “Today the NRC’s approval confirms what we already know … we are safe, and we are environmentally sound.”

She called the plant’s safety standards “world-class” and praised staff for their dedication amid uncertainty around the plant’s future. 

Officials reiterated that the plant is safe to operate and is a major source of the state’s clean, carbon-free energy. It powers the homes of about four million California residents and generates about 20 percent of the state’s clean energy. It is the last nuclear power plant in California. 

“This license renewal comes at a critical time, as global conflicts and trade disputes create uncertainty in energy markets,” said Congressmember Salud Carbajal at Thursday’s conference. “I’m proud that our state is taking decisive steps to secure our power grid.”

Carbajal has been a vocal proponent of the Morro Bay Offshore Wind Energy Project, which was meant to replace and exceed Diablo’s energy output. But thanks to the Trump administration’s crusade against wind, that project currently hangs in limbo.

Originally, PG&E intended to decommission the plant’s two nuclear reactors by 2025, as outlined in a 2016 agreement. But the state granted the plant an extension in 2022 to allow it to keep operating until 2030, due to concerns that California was not producing enough clean energy to replace the plant. Diablo is a “steady power source,” according to officials, which is fit to help meet the state’s growing electricity demand amid increasing risks of power outages.

But there is mounting public anxiety behind the plant’s continued operation. Advocacy groups, such as Mothers for Peace, say PG&E is blowing smoke, at the expense of California residents.

“We knew the NRC would give the go-ahead to PG&E, even without test results on embrittlement at Unit 1, and without resolution of the seismic concerns beneath Diablo,” said Linda Seeley, a Mothers for Peace representative. “The NRC is a hand-servant to the industry.”

She noted the potential cost to taxpayers to keep Diablo running — just shy of $700 million — which will continue even as the state faces a $18 billion deficit. Despite what PG&E and the state claim about a lack of clean energy resources, Seeley claims that the plant is unnecessary and that the state already has enough power to keep the lights on. 

She and other anti-nuclear advocates and environmentalists say the plant is not worth the risk: “This is a time bomb waiting to go off,” she said. “Its not structurally sound,” based on possible embrittlement — when radiation causes surrounding materials to be more likely to break — and the fact the plant sits on and near several earthquake fault lines (although PG&E maintains that the plant is built to withstand these hazards, at least through 2030).

Add on top of those risks the environmental concerns — the barrels of radioactive toxic waste created every day at the plant, and its harms to the coastal environment through its seawater cooling system that heats marine waters and kills organisms, according to environmental groups — and the NRC’s decision seems to defy logic, Seeley said. Although a laundry list of million-dollar mitigation efforts are promised by PG&E in exchange for the plant’s continued operation, which was approved by the Coastal Commission in December, they don’t add up to a net benefit, opponents argue. It’s not a “green” operation in the slightest, Seeley contended. 

Still, PG&E was able to acquire all state approvals to keep the plant running until at least 2030. But to operate the plant past 2030, PG&E needs permission from the state Legislature and a new wastewater discharge permit from the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Board.

“We think it was a very unwise decision; we will be working with the California state legislature to prevent a 20-year extension of the operating license,” Seeley said.