E&E: California’s Diablo nuclear plant gets 20-year extension from federal regulators

https://www.eenews.net/articles/californias-nuclear-plant-gets-20-year-extension-from-federal-regulators/​​​​​​​

California’s nuclear plant gets 20-year extension from federal regulators

The decision extends the life of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, which has operated since 1985.

By: 

 | 04/03/2026 06:33 AM EDT

The Diablo Canyon Power Plant sits on California's Central Coast.Pacific Gas and Electric

ENERGYWIRE | Federal officials on Thursday approved a 20-year extension for California’s only nuclear power plant, capping a remarkable turnaround for a facility that was previously slated to retire and bolstering the ongoing resurgence of American nuclear energy.

What happened: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Acting Director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation Jeremy Groom signed off on Pacific Gas & Electric’s license renewal application to extend operations of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant through 2045. That opens the door to the plant staying open for another two decades, but to do so, it will also need permission from the state, which has so far only authorized operations through 2030.

“As California advances its clean energy and reliability goals, Diablo Canyon remains a stabilizing force on a dynamic grid,” Groom said during the signing ceremony. “It provides a steady source of carbon-free power during a period of rapid transition, supporting climate objectives while ensuring that the lights stay on in homes and businesses across the state.”

Why it matters: The NRC decision sets the stage for a major debate in the California Legislature over whether to extend the state's current permissions for the plant. The contours of that conversation, which have largely focused on grid reliability and energy affordability, illustrate how dramatically views of nuclear power have shifted in recent years.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has thus far refrained from taking a position on whether to keep the plant open beyond 2030, released a statement celebrating the decision.

“Today, I welcome the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's approval as we continue California's clean energy transition, creating good-paying jobs, fighting climate change and cementing the Golden State as a global powerhouse,” Newsom said.

PG&E leadership, meanwhile, was ecstatic about the signing.

“I am so excited my heart is just going to pop out of my chest,” PG&E Chief Nuclear Officer Paula Gerfen said at the event. “With all the distractions that we’ve had, the near closure of the station, then the turnaround in 2022, this team … stayed focused and ran the units safely, reliably and affordably through almost a decade of noise.”

Context: In 2016, PG&E signed an agreement with environmental and labor groups to retire Diablo Canyon by 2025, when its NRC license expired, and replace its electricity production with renewables and energy storage. At that time, global concern sparked by the 2011 leaks at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant loomed large over Diablo Canyon, as did California’s growing renewable energy generation requirements.

But in 2020, rolling blackouts exposed the vulnerabilities of the California grid, and a 2022 heat wave strained the system to the brink. That year, Newsom led a successful effort to extend Diablo Canyon to 2030 to shore up the electricity supply.

PG&E needed permission from the NRC to continue operating through 2030. But instead of applying for a five-year period, the company applied for a 20-year extension, the maximum that the NRC grants.

As the utility collected its state-level permits to extend operations during the past year, some lawmakers signaled an appetite to keep Diablo Canyon online beyond 2030. That included the influential chair of the Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee, Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, who told POLITICO that the state will need Diablo Canyon to meet soaring electricity demands.

At the Thursday signing, John Grubb, interim president of the Bay Area Council, a business interest group, signaled that his organization will fight for an extension.

“The next step is securing long-term, durable support from the state of California, so that this facility can operate with certainty through 2045, and beyond,” Grubb said. “The Bay Area Council will be actively working with state leaders this year to ensure that Diablo Canyon remains part of California's energy future.”

But some legislative leaders have been hesitant to embrace an extension in light of concerns that the 2022 agreement turned out to be a bad deal for the state, especially given that taxpayers may end up footing a significant portion of the $1.4 billion loan California gave PG&E.

Multiple environmental groups are also working to stop Diablo Canyon’s march toward an extension by challenging its water permits.

Linda Seeley, vice president of San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, a nuclear-critical environmental group, said that she opposed the NRC extension due to the facility’s large price tag and safety concerns stemming from Diablo Canyon’s proximity to earthquake faults.

The NRC signoff Thursday “lands us right back with our state legislature to turn around the unwise, foolish, expensive, unneeded Diablo Canyon,” Seeley said.

Background: Meanwhile, a growing coalition of business leaders, public officials and some environmentalists across the nation are backing nuclear energy as a means to power the electricity-hungry artificial intelligence boom.

President Donald Trump has been reshaping the NRC with the goal of quadrupling nuclear power by 2050, but even some of his Democratic antagonists wish he was doing more to push the power source forward. The Diablo Canyon approval represents the 100th renewed operating license for nuclear power plants issued by the NRC, according to Groom.

What’s next: With the NRC permission in hand, PG&E now has the regulatory signoffs it needs to operate Diablo Canyon through 2030. The company’s CEO has called on the California Legislature to act this year if lawmakers want to extend its lifetime beyond then.

NH Bulletin recounts stubborn nuclear waste conundrum to new reactor expansion

https://newhampshirebulletin.com/2026/04/06/new-hampshire-and-nuclear-waste-have-a-fraught-history-the-path-ahead-is-still-unclear/?emci=8e7ae6a5-872f-f111-9a48-000d3a14b640&emdi=be06b4c2-a731-f111-9a48-000d3a14b640&ceid=151160&fbclid=IwY2xjawRAoGNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeck1jHG2vPQV6KvetWA2jMbFoKPBTZZlqRycnFH8IDXGs2ez_99VjIyuHdoA_aem_9yy-OeW_MVIm6_HQVvQwIA

The Trump Admin Is Doing Something Horrifying to Workers at Nuclear Facilities

https://nz.news.yahoo.com/trump-administration-doing-something-horrifying-202055435.html

The Trump Administration Is Doing Something Horrifying to Workers at Nuclear Facilities

Joe Wilkins, Wed, 1 April 2026

It isn’t just the guys handling plutonium who need to worry about radiation — every US nuclear worker, from the plumbers patching leaks to the janitors mopping floors, has a reason to be on guard.

New reporting by High Country News detailed the startling impact the Trump administration is having on the safety of nuclear energy workers.  As part of the administration’s “nuclear renaissance,” the US Department of Energy (DOE) has begun stripping back effective safety regulations that had previously limited workers’ exposure to deadly radiation.

“They’re pulling away from what’s kept us safe all these years,” Bradley Clawson, a former nuclear energy worker at Idaho National Laboratory, told HCN.  “In the long run it helped us as workers.  It was keeping us from getting a higher dose.”

Following four executive orders aimed at nuclear deregulation, both the DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have taken an increasingly lax view of safety at both federal nuclear projects like labs and cleanup sites, as well as commercial energy facilities.  Under Trump, these agencies no longer seem to operate on the long-held assumption that even a small amount of radiation exposure is bad for human health.  Instead, speed is the name of the game.

The language in one May 2025 executive order makes its deregulatory intent clear in no uncertain terms: “In particular, the NRC shall reconsider reliance on the linear no-threshold (LNT) model for radiation exposure and the ‘as low as reasonably achievable’ standard, which is predicated on LNT,” the order read.

At Los Alamos National Laboratory, for example, non-nuclear workers like plumbers and metalworkers are exposed to some amount of radiation, but as HCN notes, the Trump administration has forced the site to double its annual output of nuclear cores.

In a scathing letter to various government administrators, a group of organizations made up of doctors, environmental activists, and researchers called the safety rollbacks a “deliberate subversion of science and public health in favor of corporate interests.”

“Accepting weaker radiation protections amounts to accepting an ever-increasing level of avoidable human disease and suffering,” the letter continues.

The deregulations come as nuclear facilities across the US face a growing shortage of trained and experienced staff — an issue Trump admin energy department layoffs hasn’t exactly helped, and which is in direct contradiction with the White House’s stated goal of jumpstarting America’s nuclear energy capacity.

Facing lagging staff numbers but a rapidly changing nuclear energy landscape, many facilities have to turned to third-party contractors in order to keep up.  The result, critics say, is a breakdown in long-term safety culture as contractors move from site to site.  One prime example of this came in October, when a contractor at Michigan’s Palisade Power Plant fell into a reactor cavity.

Constellation Energy tops S&P 500 losers after no news on power deals for data centers

https://seekingalpha.com/news/4570904-constellation-energy-tops-sp-500-losers-after-no-news-on-power-deals-for-data-centers

Constellation's stock has fallen more than 10% since its quarterly investor call on Monday, on which CEO Joe D. announced exactly zero new deals with AI companies since leading investors to believe it would have contracts  to sell 'at least 1 GW of nuclear power to a tech company at "premium pricing (15+ year terms)."'

The stock price took an immediate dive on Tuesday, rallied a bit yesterday, but has continued to fall today. This isn't only a short-term trend. The stock price is down more than 30% over the last 5.5 months. It fell even lower by early February, then rose again on the news that AI power deals were coming. But that didn't come through before the investor call.

Tim Judson (he/him) 

Executive Director 

Nuclear Information and Resource Service  

unceded Nacotchtank and Piscataway territory

POLICY NRC to add new items to categorical exclusions list.

POLICY

NRC to add new items to categorical exclusions list

19h ago Nuclear News

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has identified five categories of action to add to its list of categorical exclusions to reduce its documentation work under National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) procedures.

These revisions are included in the final rule, “Categorical exclusions from environmental review,” which was published in the Federal Register on March 30. The final rule will become effective on April 29.

“Revisions to the categorical exclusions will (1) clarify and address inconsistencies in the application of categorical exclusions across licensing and regulatory programs and (2) eliminate the need to prepare EAs [environmental assessments] for NRC regulatory actions that have no significant effect on the human environment,” the final rule’s regulatory analysis states.

The new additions: According to the FR notice, the NRC’s categorical exclusions include “administrative, organizational, and procedural amendments to certain types of NRC regulations, licenses, and certificates; minor changes related to application filing procedures; certain personnel and procurement activities; and activities for which environmental review by the NRC is excluded by statute.”

Below are the five new categorical exclusions:

• Actions that are administrative, procedural, or solely financial in nature, including exemptions and orders pertaining to these actions.
• Amendments to 10 CFR 72.214, “List of approved spent fuel storage casks,” for new, amended, revised, or renewed certificates of compliance for cask designs used for spent fuel storage.
• Approvals provided for under the requirements of 10 CFR 50.55a, “Codes and standards.”
• Certain changes to requirements for fire protection, emergency planning, physical security, cybersecurity, and quality assurance.
• Changes to extend implementation dates of certain new NRC requirements that were previously found to not result in an environmental impact.

Background: NEPA requires federal agencies to assess the environmental impact of some of their actions prior to deciding whether to move forward. Each action falls under one of three categories: categorical exclusion (for actions with no significant environmental impact), environmental assessment (EA), and environmental impact statement (EIS). If the agency believes an action is not likely to cause a significant impact on the environment, the submission of an EA is required. If the agency believes the environmental impact of an action is significant, the more comprehensive EIS must be submitted.

If it is determined that something in a given category has no significant effect on the environment, then the agency can establish a categorical exclusion for that item.

The NRC published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking on May 7, 2021, after an NRC review of its environmental programs and organization identified potential opportunities to add, remove, or enhance its list of exclusions. A public comment opportunity elicited more than 2,300 comments, most of them duplicates. According to the FR notice, the NRC evaluated and considered 20 comments during the drafting of the proposed rule that was ultimately published on July 2, 2024.

Other revisions: Along with the new additions, NRC staff will eliminate two existing categorical exclusions that are no longer necessary because they are obsolete. It will also reorganize the list of categorical exclusions to “eliminate redundancy, add clarity, and improve consistency and efficiency.” This reorganization would eliminate some overlapping actions and consolidate others.

By reducing the number of required environmental assessments and requests for additional information, the final rule could save about 1,030 staff hours per year over the next 10 years, according to the NRC’s regulatory analysis.

[decomm_wkg] GAO: Clarification of HLW definition could save DOE billions

WASTE MANAGEMENT

GAO: Clarification of HLW definition could save DOE billions

Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 10:29AM Nuclear News

A photo from inside the AX-101 underground waste tank at the DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington. (Photo: DOE)

A clearer definition of what constitutes high-level radioactive waste could save the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management “tens of billions of dollars” in waste management costs and accelerate its cleanup schedule by decades, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

DOE-EM’s efforts to manage waste resulting from legacy spent nuclear fuel reprocessing have been hindered for decades by the ambiguity of the statutory definition of HLW as laid out in the Atomic Energy Act and Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the report states. While admitting that the DOE has taken steps to overcome this ambiguity, the GAO says that the department has not fully evaluated all available opportunities to treat and dispose of waste more economically as either transuranic or low-level radioactive waste.

“By systematically evaluating these opportunities and pursuing them to the maximum extent possible, [DOE-EM] could accelerate its cleanup mission and save at least tens of billions of dollars,” the GAO report says.

The report, Nuclear Waste Cleanup: Clarifying Definition of High-Level Radioactive Waste Could Help DOE Save Tens of Billions of Dollars (GAO-26-108018), was published on March 25.

Recommendations: Acknowledging the complexity of the issue and the implications that revising the statutory definition of HLW could have, the GAO suggests that Congress consider convening a panel of experts to recommend specific revisions to the HLW definition to address any ambiguities.

The GAO is also recommending a Blue Ribbon Commission comprising a group of relevant experts from, for example, key agencies, industry, and academia who could develop and recommend specific revisions to the definition of HLW in the AEA and NWPA and report these recommendations to Congress within 12 months.

The GAO also recommends that DOE-EM “systematically evaluate opportunities to treat and dispose of certain waste associated with reprocessing as something other than HLW and communicate to Congress regarding its efforts to implement these opportunities as well as actions Congress can take to minimize or eliminate any barriers impeding [DOE-EM’s] ability to pursue them.”

In response to the report, the DOE agreed with the GAO’s recommendations.

The tools at hand: The GAO report notes that DOE-EM has three main classification tools it can use to determine that certain waste associated with reprocessing is not HLW:

• The Waste Incidental to Reprocessing evaluation, as outlined in DOE Manual 435.1-1.
• Section 3116 of the Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2005.
• The DOE’s 2019 HLW interpretation, which was incorporated into DOE Manual 435.1-1.

“While the tools provide [DOE-EM] with formal requirements and a process for clarifying which waste is not HLW and may be safely treated and disposed of as non-HLW, the three tools have shortcomings that impede [DOE-EM’s] ability to progress with its cleanup of certain waste streams,” the report states.

Specifically, the GAO finds that the three classification tools do not provide a consistent radioactive threshold at which waste is considered HLW; do not fully apply at the DOE sites involved in cleaning up reprocessing waste (the Hanford and Savannah River Sites, Idaho National Laboratory, and the West Valley Demonstration Project); and can be an expensive and extensive process to use, leading to delays.

In addition, the GAO report states that the lack of clarity in the definition of HLW has left DOE-EM vulnerable to lawsuits when applying the classification tools. This includes risks posed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling overturning the Chevron doctrine. That decision may put the department in greater litigation risk, as courts may no longer defer to the DOE’s interpretation of the AEA and NWPA regarding what constitutes HLW, simply because the law is ambiguous.

Lancaster County to get Pa. funds for Three Mile Island emergency planning

Lancaster County to get Pa. funds for Three Mile Island emergency planning

• TOM LISI | Staff Writer      Mar 24, 2026

Constellation Energy Corp. hopes to restart Crane Clean Energy Center, formerly Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 reactor, to supply Microsoft data centers with low-carbon energy.SUZETTE WENGER | Staff Photographer

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With the Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear reactor slated to reopen next year, Lancaster County is set to receive additional state funding for nuclear emergency response planning.

The Board of Commissioners on Wednesday is set to approve a $36,500 grant from the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency to help cover the salary of a response manager who is updating the county’s response plans to a nuclear disaster for the Lancaster County Emergency Management Division.

The Lancaster County Salary Board approved the creation of the radiological planner position in October.

The plans include “everything from how we communicate and notify people, as well as to how we’re going to evacuate people, so we have somebody specifically focused on rebuilding all of that from the ground up,” Department of Public Safety Director Brian Pasquale said.

In 2024, Constellation Energy announced plans to reopen Unit 1 of the Three Mile Island facility and gave it a new name — Crane Clean Energy Center. The sole customer for the facility’s 835 megawatts of expected output is Microsoft, which has signed a 20-year agreement to buy power for its growing network of data centers.

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READ NEXT: An inside look at reopening Three Mile Island’s nuclear plant expected in 2027

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In December, Constellation Chief Executive Joe Dominguez said he expects the facility to be operational in the summer of 2027, a year earlier than initially planned. He said its opening will come at a pivotal time to “power this important revolution in AI.”

Unit 2 has remained closed since its partial meltdown in 1979, and its owner, Energy Solutions, in the process of decommissioning the reactor.

Unit 1 remained in operation until 2019, when Constellation closed it, citing cost concerns.

On Monday, Lancaster County’s emergency preparedness team held its first tabletop exercise related to the reopening of the Three Mile Island site, Pasquale said at Tuesday’s commissioners work session.

Tabletop exercises are a planning tool to game out specific real-world scenarios to put plans and procedures to the test in a low-stakes environment.

The PEMA dollars for the county comes from the Radiological Emergency Response Program, funded by fees assessed to nuclear operators.