Operators of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, the last remaining nuclear facility in California, have more time if they want to apply for a portion of a $6 billion rescue program offered by the federal government.
Applications for the Civil Nuclear Credit Program were originally due on Thursday but the U.S. Department of Energy has extended the deadline a few more weeks, to July 5.
Funded with money from last year’s bipartisan infrastructure law, the program looks to keep financially strapped plants open. The effort was established by the Biden administration because the nuclear sector generates more than half of the country’s carbon-free electricity.
By itself, Diablo Canyon’s 2,240 megawatts of production accounts for about 9 percent of the total power mix in California.
Operated by Pacific Gas & Electric, the plant is scheduled to begin shutting down operations in two years.
But last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom raised the prospect of temporarily extending the life of the plant by applying to receive a piece of the $6 billion fund, citing concerns that closing Diablo could leave California’s power grid to potential outages in the short term.
In an email to the Union-Tribune, the governor’s office said the Department of Energy extension is helpful and while Newsom wants to see Diablo Canyon closed eventually, he “supports keeping all options on the table as we build out our plan to ensure reliable energy this summer and beyond.”
As plant operator, PG&E would be responsible for filing a submission with the Energy Department. The utility has been non-committal when asked if it will proceed with an application.
“We’re still assessing whether and how Diablo Canyon fits into the funding opportunity,” said PG&E senior manager Suzanne Hosn. “It’s a very complex process and it was a very short timeframe for any applicant so the fact that there’s an extension gives us more time to review and evaluate the criteria.”
Gene Nelson, government liaison for Californians for Green Nuclear Power and a longtime advocate of keeping Diablo Canyon open, said his group is “very encouraged” by the extension to July 5.
“California, as the world’s fifth-largest economy, needs huge amounts of dispatchable power” that can always be accessed, Nelson said. “Everybody now when they look at their power bills, when they look at their (natural) gas bills, they say, ‘Oh my goodness, that’s going through the roof.’ Clearly, Diablo Canyon would help restrain the growth rate” of utility bills.
In 2016, PG&E announced it had reached an agreement with a collection of environmental and labor groups to close Diablo Canyon and replace its generation with a combination of renewable energy sources, increased energy efficiency measures and the departure of PG&E customers to community choice energy programs.
“The plan to shut down Diablo Canyon should remain intact because every one of the reasons we had in 2016 when this started are as valid today as they were then,” said David Weisman of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, a group critical of nuclear power that took part in the PG&E agreement.
Ever since Diablo Canyon construction efforts began in 1968, the plant’s opponents have worried about seismic activity and potential tsunamis in the surrounding area, as well as the federal government’s decades-long inability to find a repository to store the spent fuel, or waste, that is generated by reactors across the country.
“Letting PG&E continue to run the facility on the backs of taxpayers is a waste of scarce resources and only further delays moving the state and the nation toward a future of safe and abundant renewable electricity,” Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said in a statement.
Two days before the Department of Energy issued the deadline extension, Reuters reported the Nuclear Energy Institute and the Edison Electric Institute — two industry trade groups— sent a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm asking for more time.
The creation of the Civil Nuclear Credit Program comes as California’s electric grid finds itself under increasing strain.
In August 2020, two consecutive days of blackouts resulted in outages lasting as long as 2 1/2 hours in some parts of the state and last year, the grid operator barely avoided a repeat after a series of heat waves pushed California’s electric system to its limits.
Earlier this month, state energy officials told reporters if conditions are bad this summer, the electric grid could find itself 1,700 megawatts short of needed capacity. Using rough calculations by the California Energy Commission, 1,700 megawatts is enough to power about 1.3 million homes.
