ML22238A346
| ML22238A346 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Diablo Canyon  |
| Issue date: | 07/21/2022 |
| From: | NRC/NRR/DORL/LPL4 |
| To: | |
| Doell M | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML22238A344 | List: |
| References | |
| EPID L-2019-LRL-0004, EPID L-2019-LRL-0005, EPID L-2019-LRL-0006, NRC-2022 | |
| Download: ML22238A346 (132) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Diablo Canyon Post-Shutdown Decommissioning Activities Report Public Meeting Docket Numbers: 50-275 & 50-323 Location: San Luis Obispo, California Date: Thursday, July 21, 2022 Work Order No.: NRC-2022 Pages 1-130 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1716 14th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009 (202) 234-4433
1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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DIABLO CANYON POST-SHUTDOWN DECOMMISSIONING ACTIVITIES REPORT PUBLIC MEETING
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THURSDAY JULY 21, 2022
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The Meeting was convened at San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors Office, 1055 Monterey Street, San Luis Obispo, California, at 6:00 p.m. PT, Shaun Anderson, Chief, Reactor Decommissioning Branch, presiding.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
2 PRESENT SHAUN ANDERSON, Chief, Reactor Decommissioning Branch, NRC MARLAYNA DOELL, Project Manager, Reactor Decommissioning Group BRETT KLUKAN, Facilitator SARAH LOPAS, Facilitator BRANDY LOPEZ, Decommissioning and Licensing Supervisor, PG&E JOHN MONNINGER, Deputy Regional Administrator, Region IV, NRC GREGORY SUBER, Deputy Director, Division of Operating Reactor Licensing BRUCE WATSON, Special Assistant to the Division of Decommissioning, Uranium Recovery, and Waste Programs, NRC NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
3 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 6:01 p.m.
MR. KLUKAN: Welcome, everyone. My name is Brett Klukan. Normally, I serve as the regional counsel for Region I of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but tonight I'll be serving as the facilitator of this meeting.
In that task, I'll be assisted by Sarah Lopas, who will be virtually facilitating via Microsoft Teams. This meeting will have a hybrid format, and I'll explain a little bit more about that in a minute.
You'll notice that we're wearing masks.
San Luis Obispo County is currently rated as high on the CDC Community Level chart. Because of that, and consistent with the Federal Safer Workforce Task Force Guidance and the NRC implementation, NRC employees are required to wear masks at this time. Whether you wear a mask is optional for you. We just wanted to make that clear at the outset of the meeting.
As will be discussed in greater detail by Bruce Watson after the conclusion of my very short opening remarks, the purpose of this public meeting is to receive public comments on the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, Units 1 and 2, post-shutdown NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
4 decommissioning activities report, including the site-specific decommissioning process cost estimate and the irradiated fuel management plan.
Please note that tonight's meeting as was announced is being recorded and also transcribed. We ask that you help us to get a full, clear accounting of the meeting by staying on mute if you are on the phone or on Teams and are not speaking at that time.
Please for those of you in the room, keep your electronic devices silent and side discussions to a minimum. Again, if you are not speaking at the podium.
Also, it would help us out greatly if all speakers when it is their turn to speak could identify themselves along with any affiliations when they first begin speaking. Again, you only have to announce your affiliation if you so choose.
All meeting attendees on Teams will have their microphones muted and cameras disabled during the presentation. When we get to the public comment portion of the meeting, those of you on Teams can use the Raise Your Hand function to signal that you have a question. Or those of you on the phone can press Star 5.
Once our Teams Facilitator Sarah enables NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
5 your microphone, you will then have to unmute yourself before you ask your question or pose your comment.
For those of you participating by phone, you can unmute yourself by pressing Star 6, and I will go over this again once we get to the public comment portion of the meeting.
For those of you attending in person, if you'd like to speak during the public comment portion of the meeting and have not already done so already, please step outside to register your interest on that sign-up sheet just outside of the door to the meeting room.
For the sake of simplicity, the speaking order will be as follows. I will go to one person in the room, then one person online, and then back and forth until we've exhausted the number of people who would like to speak this evening.
Again, for those participating on Teams, please note that the chat function has been disabled.
If you have any troubles seeing the slides or if they are not advancing for you, the slides as being shown during the meeting tonight can be found in the NRC's ADAMS library at ML22200A071 and ML22200A072.
Again, that's ML22200A071, and then the other one is A072. You can also go to the meeting NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
6 notice page on the NRC's website, and there will be a link to the slides there.
Now for some basic ground rules. As I announce at all public meetings, I ask that you adhere to civil decorum. Have respect for each other. You don't disrupt each other's speaking times just as you wouldn't want to be interrupted during your opportunity to speak.
However, with that said, threatening gestures or other statements under no circumstance will be tolerated and will be cause for immediate ejection from the meeting. If you feel that you've been threatened, please let me know or one of the other NRC personnel you see standing in the meeting room or outside of the meeting room.
If you have something you'd like to give to the panel of the NRC staff, please hand it to me.
And then one last item before I turn it over to Bruce.
Hoping that you will fill out our public meeting feedback form at the conclusion of the meeting tonight, you can find a link to that form on the NRC's public meeting schedule for this page.
Your opinion on this how this meeting went will greatly improve how we conduct our future meetings. I really encourage you to please take a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
7 moment to let us know what you think.
Finally, emergency exits are straight out the doors behind you. The restrooms are just further down the hallway.
Finally, I will now like to turn it over to Bruce Watson, the special assistant to the Division of Decommissioning, Uranium Recovery, and Waste Programs in the NRC Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguard. With that, I'll turn it over to Bruce.
MR. WATSON: Thank you, Brett.
Sounds like I'm coming through. Speaking through the mask, if you hear issues with our talking through the mask, let us know and we'll do our best to raise the volume if we can. It's a very nice facility here that provides for us to communicate, I hope well, and with the speaking system.
We're here tonight to talk about the Diablo Canyon post-shutdown decommissioning activities report. I offer my apologies. The report was originally submitted to us in December of 2019. We scheduled a public meeting.
It was supposed to happen about the week that the entire country basically shut down because of the COVID pandemic, so we canceled that meeting. We tried to reschedule earlier this year, and of course NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
8 we had another spike in issues with the pandemic. So we had to defer to again.
Here we are finally tonight. We didn't hit the three-strike rule as Brett would say, but we're here. I just want to remind you we are here to hear your comments on the post-shutdown decommissioning report. You're going to hear us refer to that as the PSDAR.
Questions about license renewal or continued operation of the plant. We have some people to address those questions that you have for those.
If we have time at the end of this meeting, we'll go to that. But if not, we have some people who will be here from the NRC staff that can answer your questions.
But the bottom line with the license renewal is the NRC has not received an application, and so therefore we have no information on exactly what PG&E is going to do along those lines. I understand there's a tremendous number of issues to be resolved in order to get there, but I do know that they have applied for the subsidies or the federal government support.
At the end of this meeting, I will provide a brief summary. I may not cover everything, but I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
9 hope to provide you a brief summary of what we heard here tonight on the PSDAR. And we have to be finished, I believe, at 9:00. We plan to be on schedule.
I'd like to have the NRC staff introduce themselves. We're going to start down here with --
MR. ANDERSON: Good evening. My name is Shaun Anderson. I'm the new chief of Reactor Decommissioning Headquarters.
MR. SUBER: My name is Gregory Suber, and I am the deputy director of the Division of Operating Reactor Licensing.
MR. MONNINGER: Good evening. I'm John Monninger. I'm NRC's deputy regional administrator for our Region IV Office in Arlington, Texas. Thank you.
MR. WATSON: Anybody want to talk out here?
Marlayna? You're a part of the slides, but go ahead and introduce yourself.
MS. DOELL: There you go. Sorry about that. Do not hold down the button.
Hi, my name is Marlayna Doell. I'm a project manager in the reactor decommissioning group.
I work for Shaun.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
10 MR. WATSON: We have a variety of other people in the room if we have some technical question the Panel needs, or the group up here needs some help with. Also, Brandy Lopez is here from PG&E. She's going to be doing their part of the presentation to present the PSDAR to you. With that, let's go ahead and go to the first slide, please.
PARTICIPANT: And just for clarification, just want to make sure it's clear, PG&E has not applied for a subsidy as of right now.
MR. WATSON: Oh, they haven't? Okay.
Sorry.
Okay, this is our meeting agenda. Like I said, we did the information and meeting procedures with Brett. We have a brief presentation we're going to do, and we're going to start with that now. Like I said at the end, we will finish by 9:00, and hopefully I will have a summary of your comments written down.
Next slide, please.
There's a variety of people at this particular meeting, which Shaun has already introduced himself and I've introduced myself. Also, Marlayna has introduced herself, but the operating project manager in the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation is Samson Lee. Presently, any communications with the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
11 status of the plant and operational issues should go through him. His contact information his here.
Did you get the screenshot? Thank you.
Let's move on.
Okay, our decommissioning program is quite extensive. The regulations have been in place since 1997, so we have a lot of operating experience with the decommissioning. And so, there's certain requirements on the licensee and there are certain requirements on the NRC.
One of those by regulation is to hold a public meeting to get public comments on the post-shutdown decommissioning activities report, which we are doing tonight. We're also required to do by regulation a public meeting when the license termination plan is presented to us, but of course that's quite a way down the road.
I wanted to make sure though that we have and will participate in local nuclear decommissioning citizens advisory panels when we're invited. I've been out here, I think five times, for various reasons. I came and talked with the NDCAP a number of years ago, the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee.
I was here with Congressman Carbajal for NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
12 his town hall meeting, and I was most recently here for the decommissioning transition rulemaking meeting, which we held here in April. So, I'm very happy to be back.
The public has various roles in the process. Most of those are information, but there's specific areas where they can make comments and also provide for hearing requests.
Next slide, please.
Like I said, we have a lot of decommissioning. We've done almost 80 complex sites since the regulations went into effect in 1997. This includes 11 power reactors. The most recent one that had the license terminated was PG&E's Humboldt Bay, and we did that in November of last year. So, we do have extensive experience. Probably more than any country in the world.
Next slide, please.
Of course, our program right now is 17 reactors in active decommissioning. They're in active dismantling. We also have nine plants that are in what we call SAFSTOR or deferred or delayed dismantlement, and they are basically kept in a safe condition until the utility, or the licensee decides to decommission those.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
13 The other two plants that are planning or have announced their shutting down are of course Diablo 1 and 2. They've been on our radar screen for a long time.
Next slide, please.
As I mentioned, the Humboldt Bay, the license was terminated in 2021. It was a very complex site. It also had two fossil fuel facilities next to it, and it had a very special situation with the containment building being subterranean, which required a lot of extensive work, and PG&E did a very special super job decommissioning that facility from both a safety and regulatory viewpoints.
The picture on the right is Rancho Seco.
The license was terminated in 2009. I actually took this picture a couple of years ago. Our regulations do not require site restoration; that's a state issue.
Once the plant meets all the requirements to have the license terminated, in all cases these have been released for unrestricted release. So, it's up to the utility, in this case Sacramento Municipal Power District, to finish the demolition of the building and structures when they choose to, but they all meet our criteria for residual radioactivity.
Next slide, please.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
14 Also in California, there's some decommissioning work being done at GE Vallecitos. This is up in Northern California, east of San Francisco.
There's two of the prototype reactors that were built to prove the concept of nuclear power for boiling water reactors. And of course, I'm sure everybody's aware of the decommissioning activities down at San Onofre, down the coast south of here between Los Angeles and San Diego.
Next slide, please.
Okay, the objectives of the decommissioning program is that we provide oversight and monitoring over the entire period of the decommissioning process. We'll be there to verify the conduct of decommissioning activities.
We'll be there for high-risk activities with our inspectors. We'll verify that the License E follows our procedures and make sure the controls are in place on all the radioactive material. And we will ensure that safety problems and violations are promptly identified and corrected.
So we don't go away when the plant shuts down. As a matter of fact, we switch to a different inspection manual chapter, and we have a specific inspection manual chapter on reactor decommissioning NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
15 which we follow.
The inspectors will also be trending the safety performance of the utility as they conduct the work. We'll also be here to ensure that the fuel is safely transferred and continues to be safe once it's place in dry storage.
Next slide, please.
The reactor inspection process, we enter the program. Like I said, we switch to inspection manual chapter, it's actually Number 2561 on reactor decommissioning. The inspection process requires them to inspect the site based on the activities at the site.
So, if there's high-risk activities or more safety risk issues, we'll be there more frequently. But the manual does allow a lot of flexibility and allows for the frequency to be as-needed.
But we are there periodically, and we normally set up a routine inspection program for the sites when they first get into decommissioning based on what the information provided to us in the PSDAR, along with frequent calls between the project manager and the inspectors.
And of course, inspection reports are NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
16 available publicly in our ADAMS system. Those are available to you at any time. At the end of the decommissioning program, if you want to call it that, we make sure that the site meets the criteria for residual radioactivity.
Our criteria is 25 millirem per year, plus the practice of ALARA. And I can tell you that the first 11 power reactors that have been decommissioned were all along the lines of a few millirem, one to three typically. Same thing with Humboldt Bay.
We do terminate the license, which is the footprint where the reactor is, but the spent fuel facility remains under license and will be inspected until it's removed.
Next slide, please.
Like I said, we continue to inspect the spent fuel installations. It's got its own inspection manual chapter. We also perform inspections on site at the fabrication facility to make sure that the casks and other materials meet standards.
We also attend the preoperational testing, the dry runs of the loading of those casks, and we also inspect the fuel loading on those campaigns and conduct routine dry fuel storage inspections and anything else that may happen during the process that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
17 the fuel may be in storage.
Next slide, please.
The PSDAR, Post-Shutdown Decommissioning Activities Reports, basically contains a number of important things. The purpose of the PSDAR is to communicate with the local communities, the state and the NRC on what the plans are from the licensee on how the decommissioning process is going to occur.
The first thing in here is the description of the planned decommissioning activities. There's a high-level schedule. I'm going to remind everybody that the regulations allow for the decommissioning to go out quite a long time.
They have to be completed within 60 years, so the schedule will be decided on by the utility. In this case, they have a fairly prompt schedule in doing the decommissioning.
They have to provide a site-specific cost estimate for the decommissioning, and review that from financial people. There's a discussion on the potential environmental impacts of the decommissioning, and they have to describe anything that may be different from the environmental assessment from when they operated the plant.
Some of these post-shutdown NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
18 decommissioning activities reports may contain the irradiated fuel management plan just to be concise with what's going to happen with the spent fuel on the site.
Next slide, please.
So, the contents of the Diablo Canyon PSDAR, we're going to turn it over to Brandy Lopez who's going to present PG&E's PSDAR. Thank you.
MS. LOPEZ: Thanks, Bruce.
My name is Brandy Lopez. I'm a decommissioning licensing supervisor, and I'm going to be going over the PG&E presentation today.
The purpose of the presentation is to provide an overview of the decommissioning plans described in the PSDAR, the site-specific decommissioning cost estimate or SSDCE, and the irradiated fuel management plan or IFMP.
The discussion will provide a high-level overview of what was in the 2019 submittal, and then we'll also discuss and summarize the updates that were submitted to the NRC in October of 2021.
PG&E is currently working decommissioning planning activities in order to support a direct transition into decommissioning upon plant shutdown.
As we're a few years in advance, the plans are going NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
19 to continue to evolve, and we'll continue to update these documents in accordance with the processes that I'm going to describe in the presentation today.
I wanted to emphasize that PG&E continues to plan for decommissioning independent of current state policy discussions around continued operation.
There's really three ways that PG&E and will continue to update these documents. The first two are in accordance with NRC regulations, and that's what's shown on the slide. So, there's 50.82(a)(7),
and that provides the notification requirements for the PSDAR and the SSDCE.
50.54(bb), that provides the notification requirements for the IFMP. In addition to these two, PG&E had previously agreed to provide an updated PSDAR following submittal of each nuclear decommissioning cost triennial proceeding application that PG&E submits to the California Utilities Commission every three years.
Next slide.
This slide, it provides a high-level overview of some of the activities that have taken place that have really impacted the decommissioning plans. And as first mentioned earlier, we submitted these documents in 2019 and then COVID hit. So, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
20 there's been a little of a delay in holding the meeting.
But the key takeaways are really in September of 2021, the CPUC approved the 2018 settlement agreement. That really informed the updates that we submitted in October of 2021. At the end of 2021, PG&E filed the next NDCTP application.
As you'll see here in the slide, in the third quarter of 2022 we do plan to provide an updated PSDAR, SSDCE and IFMP to reflect the decommissioning plans as submitted in that application.
Next slide.
This slide and the next slide really describe what was submitted, the plans as submitted in the 2019 documents. We really broke decommissioning up into seven major periods. You'll see this provides the start and finish state for each period and then also goes over the major activities that will take place during each period.
Just to summarize a little bit, Period 1, this is really the ongoing decommissioning planning efforts. This is really performing the detailed engineering, getting the licensing approvals, and permitting approvals needed to make that smooth transitioning into decommissioning and really supports NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
21 making changes to the site in order to start decommissioning in Period 2.
Period 3 is really the time when you have spent fuel both stored in the spent fuel pool and up at the ISFSI. You'll see here this shows a seven-year period, and this is consistent with what was in the 2019 submittal. I'll talk about that again in a few minutes because we have updated that.
The focus here is really transitioning the site, getting all the fuel out of the pools, and doing all the preparations to support the major decommissioning activities that will take place in Period 4.
Next slide.
Period 5, site restoration. Here, the focus is on performing the final status surveys in order to submit the documentation to the NRC to terminate the license. You can see here, again based on the schedule in 2019, that was scheduled to take place in 2038.
Period 6, the ISFSI operations. This is the more lengthy period where you have both spent fuel and GTCC waste protected and stored on site until it's eventually transferred offsite to a permanent repository.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
22 And then lastly, you have the ISFSI restoration, which is really the decommissioning of the ISFSI, performing those again in order to support eventually terminating the Part 72 license.
So, I mentioned we made a submittal in October of 2021 to the NRC to inform them of some significant changes to these submittal as originally submitted in 2019. The next few slides, I'm going to cover some of those changes.
The first being the wet cooling time for spent nuclear fuel. When we submitted the letter at the end of 2021, we had issued a request for proposals to reduce the spent fuel cooling time to more than four years. What this does it really -- this is as opposed to the seven years that was in the original submittal.
This really allows you to shift the major decommissioning work to the left. It moves up the schedule, and it also significantly reduces costs.
Some examples here on the slide, we no longer need to implement the spent fuel pool island. There's also a reduction in some modifications associated with cold and dark and security.
Next slide.
In 2019, we included cost associated with NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
23 removal of the breakwater and intake structures.
We've revised the plans to assume retention of both the breakwater and intake, and this is really to be used by PG&E throughout decommissioning and could eventually be transferred over to a third party. This reduces costs. It reduces the total amount of waste just due to the amount of material that was used to construct the breakwaters. Also reduces environmental impact. We now know that the breakwaters are home to the federally-endangered black abalone.
You can see here in the picture on the left-hand side shows a picture of the current intake and breakwater structure. On the right-hand side, it depicts the potential future barging operations. The idea here you can see these are just more barged directly into the existing intake cove and load the waste off of the structure.
Next slide.
As part of the PSDAR, we did review the decommissioning activities to ensure that they were bounded by previously-issued environmental impact statements. The focus of the review is the operational area, which we defined as the current Part 50 license site boundary including the access road.
And then there's also few activities that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
24 would potentially take place outside of the operational area. The first of those was the offsite power supply modification. PG&E was considering bringing in a new 12kV power supply in order to supply electrical power during decommissioning.
So, we revised the plan in order to utilize the existing 230 kV lines and switchyard to provide power during decommissioning. And so, this reduces costs and also reduces environmental impacts.
We're no longer needing to run those new distribution lines.
The second was related to the Pismo Beach Railyard facility. This was being considered as one of the principal shipping locations for waste during decommissioning. Because of that, we were considering modifications to the site, but we've changed our transportation strategy to include barging.
Because of that, the Pismo Beach Railyard is only being considered as a contingency facility to ship non-hazardous and non-radiological waste. So again, that reduces environmental impacts and also cost of the project.
We touched on it a couple times, but we did revise our waste transportation strategy to incorporate more of a blended approach. We've NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
25 incorporated barging into the strategy. Barging really helps to be able to move a large amount of waste in a relatively short amount of time.
This will be important when you move into the major decommissioning activities. Barging is being proposed for shipping the majority of the bulk waste offsite. For the waste that won't be shipped via barge, that will leave the site via truck.
This blended approach, it reduces risks, environmental impacts, and then also overall costs for transporting waste during decommissioning. Also, the revised strategy is consistent with recommendations from the Diablo Canyon Decommissioning Engagement Panel.
In summary, the changes that we just went over, they do result in a cumulative reduction in project duration, cost and environmental impacts. And we covered the repurposing of the breakwater and intake that reduces the waste and reduces environmental impacts.
The incorporation of barging reduces the total emissions. And also, the reduction of spent fuel pool cooling time, that really moves the entire decommissioning schedule to the left and results in an earlier termination of the Part 50 licenses.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
26 Significant reduction in cost as well as compared to what was presented in the 2019 submittal.
The last change that I'm going to go over is related to the conclusions that were in the PSDAR environmental report for cultural, historical and archaeological resources.
PG&E has responsibly managed the resources within the Diablo Canyon lands for more than 40 years, and we're committed to continuing that into decommissioning. We do ongoing consultation with the Native American tribe and then also have a land stewardship committee that's really focused on preserving the resources and also avoiding damage where possible.
PG&E did evaluate the impacts of decommissioning activities to these resources in the initial review, and we concluded that they would be small and they were bounded by the decommissioning generic environmental impact statement.
With subsequent reviews and looking at all the plans, we did identify the potential for decommissioning activities to have a large impact on these resources. So PG&E will verify that the decommissioning activities that could potentially impact these resources are bounded by previously-NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
27 issued environmental impact statements or seek regulatory approval prior to performing these activities.
They are working on a comprehensive archaeological resources protection plan for decommissioning, and this includes monitoring and mitigation. There will also be additional mitigation measures required through the permitting process.
We'll continue to involve Native American monitoring.
So PG&E made the decision to shut down many years in advance of the expiration of the operating licenses. It really provides a unique opportunity in order to streamline the efforts, accelerate the schedule and reduce overall costs by continuing to do the decommissioning planning.
The NRC also granted PG&E an exemption in order to withdraw funds from the trust in order to fund these activities prior to permanent shutdown.
Again, plans are going to continue to evolve and PG&E will continue to keep the NRC and the public informed of these changes through the various processes that I described today.
Next slide.
I did want to touch on a couple few updates. I did briefly talk about the first one. In NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
28 third quarter of 2022, we do plan on submitting an updated PSDAR, SSDCE and IFMP. This update will reflect the plans as submitted to the CPUC in the 2021 NDCTP. We'll also include the detailed schedule and cost updates associated with some of the significant changes that we discussed today.
And then another separate future update.
In 2022, PG&E executed a contract with Orano for spent nuclear fuel and greater-than-class-C dry cask storage systems. So, the cost and schedule updates associated with those have not been finalized. But in accordance with the NRC regulations, we will provide a future update to reflect implementation of this new system.
MR. WATSON: Okay. Thank you, Brandy.
Next slide, please.
PSDAR review process. Obviously, we have public outreach. We have noticed in the federal register. We request your public comments through the federal register. We also have scheduled this meeting, which is required by our regulations to be in the vicinity of the plant.
The NRC will perform a technical review of the decommissioning strategy and schedule. We'll also do a financial review of the decommissioning and the spent fuel management funding plans. And of course, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
29 we will conduct our independent environmental review for decommissioning the site.
On this slide are two regulatory guides which you can look up on our public website, www.nrc.gov. And these two reg guides, 1.184 describes the decommissioning process. And of course, 1.185 describes the requirements for the contents of the post-shutdown decommissioning activities report.
Next slide, please.
So, the PSDAR questions and update of the process. We are currently reviewing the Diablo Canyon PSDAR. And if we have questions, we will request additional information so we can conclude that they've met all the requirements of information that's required to be provided to us in the PSDAR.
And as noted already, the PSDAR may be updated as part of the initial review process. And apparently, it's been supplemented once and expected another supplement soon. So subsequent updates to the PSDAR will be made publicly available. And they also provide it to the state and do not necessarily require a separate acceptance or another public meeting.
Next slide, please.
There are lots of decommissioning references for you to review. I've already mentioned NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
30 the reg guides. There's also a new reg on frequently asked questions on decommissioning. And the NRC's annual information digest also provides information on decommissioning in it.
There's also the inspection manual chapters, which we use to inspect the plant. Those are also publicly available. We also produce what we call backgrounder information, which are also publicly available.
Next slide, please.
These are some of the links that you can use to get to the documents from the internet. I'm not going to go into those. With that, your public comments. There's a variety of methods to do that.
One of course is this meeting because this meeting is being transcribed along with the virtual meeting that Marlayna is involved in watching right there.
You can submit your comments by mail, and of course this is the address for submitting comments by mail. And you can do them via the federal rulemaking website, which is regulations.gov. All you have to do is search for Docket NRC-2022-0132. And of course, comments on the PSDAR, I think we've extended the comment period numerous times now. It's October 2022 because of the supplements that have been NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
31 submitted, right.
All right. Next slide, please.
I wanted to thank you for coming out tonight. We're here to hear your comments. We're also here to hopefully answer some questions if we can. I know this meeting is focused on the post-shutdown decommissioning activities report. I think we have people that can answer some questions on license renewal and the continuing operation of the plant, but we'll do those if we have time at the end.
I was also told by PG&E that the Diablo Canyon Citizens Advisory Panel, their August meeting, end of August, is going to be focused on the license renewal and continued operation of the plant. So, I think that's another type of public meeting people can attend to find out exactly what those plans are.
With that, I'll turn it over to Brett, our facilitator, and I really thank you for your attendance.
MR. KLUKAN: Thanks, Bruce.
Before we open up the meeting to members of the public, I'd like to start with any elected officials or the representatives including any representatives of Native American tribe who'd either like just to stand to be recognized or to give NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
32 prepared remarks at this time.
We'd like to welcome two individuals in the room with us this evening, Shelly Abajian, the district director for Senator Feinstein, and Gregory Haas, the senior district representative for Congressman Carbajal.
If you are an elected official or representative of an elected official, including of Native American tribes. I'm going to start with those in the room. You can either just stand and I'll bring the microphone to you if you just want to be recognized to let people know you're here. Or if you'd like to give prepared remarks, please come to the microphone or to the other podium across from me to give your prepared remarks there just so you're in front of the camera.
With that, anyone in the room would like to give prepared remarks or be recognized at this time?
Sure. One second. He's coming.
MS. WOODRUFF: Good evening, everyone.
Thank you so much for coming. We appreciate it. I wear a few different hats, so I want to be clear about when I speak who I'm representing. I'm the senior policy advisor for State Senator John Laird, but I'm NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
33 not speaking on his behalf today.
I'm here first as a member of the Diablo Canyon Decommissioning Engagement Panel. I wanted to just buttress what you said earlier. Our community panel, which I'll describe in just a moment, will be having a meeting in August and we'll be talking specifically about the questions the potential continued operation of Diablo Canyon past 2025, so we'll have more opportunity for this discussion.
But real quickly, I wanted to mention, again Kara Woodruff, the Diablo Canyon Decommissioning Engagement Panel was formed in 2018. Our primary mission was to foster communication between the community and PG&E on the decommissioning process in particular.
We have sponsored well over 20 different meetings and public workshops. And we received some-thousand public comments regarding a whole host of issues that concerned decommissioning.
Based upon the pretty significant public input, we've prepared this document. It's called the strategic vision. I have one copy here that I'll leave with all of you. But if any of you or the public would like to see this, it's simply found at DiabloCanyonPanel.org.
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34 This document is pretty extensive. It represents the culmination of community views, and it contains a lot of recommendations about decommissioning that we heard from the community. We discussed a lot of issues, but they primarily were clustered in five different areas.
Number one, our recommendation was after decommissioning to go straight to DECON and not have stasis or alternative. In other words, we want the decommissioning to begin immediately after shutdown.
Secondly, our primary recommendation was that everything that's done associated with decommissioning would prioritize the health and safety of this community and the workers out of Diablo Canyon.
The third focus was the Diablo Canyon lands. As I'm sure all of you know, this plant is surrounded by 12,000 acres of beautiful coastal lands and we and the community would like to see those lands conserved in perpetuity, made available for sustainable public access, and tribal involvement by the Northern Chumash.
Our next focus was on the reuse of Parcel P. That's a 600-acre parcel immediately surrounding the plant operations. This community would like to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
35 see a repurposing of those facilities to the extent possible to continue some economics benefits to the community after Diablo closes.
Finally, we recommend of course the safe management of all decommissioning materials ranging from irradiated debris from parking lots all the way to spent nuclear fuel that's generated from reactor operations themself.
And the majority of our board recommends that the spent nuclear fuel be removed from the pools as soon as possible, placed in the ISFSI and then removed from the ISFSI or the dry cask storage as soon as possible to a permanent repository. And if that's not available, to an interim repository or a consolidated repository for spent nuclear fuel.
Again, we want to encourage you to learn from what we've learned, the Diablo Canyon Panel.
Please check our website, DiabloCanyonPanel.org. And if you want in particular to see the strategic vision, it's right there on the website.
That concludes my comments as a member of the Diablo Canyon Decommissioning Engagement Panel, but I wanted to say a few words just as an individual representing no one but myself.
We really can't ignore the potential NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
36 continued operation of Diablo Canyon when we're talking about the PSDAR. A lot of the recommendations that were so clearly articulated by Brandy are simply not applicable if we're talking about the continued operation of Diablo. Dry cask storage is a perfect example of that.
The normal time table to consider a relicensing of a nuclear power plant is like a decade.
And in fact, the original application to extend Diablo's operation was submitted in 2009. That was 16 years before Diablo was going to expire its licenses.
That's the kind of timeframe that PG&E thought was necessarily to adequately prepare for the future.
For the last several years since 2018, Diablo Canyon staff, corporate members, et cetera, have been focused tirelessly on decommissioning. And now here we are less than two years away, or a little bit more than two years away from the expiration of the license on Unit 1 and three years from the expiration of the license on Unit 2, we're talking about recommissioning again.
So, we're essentially squeezing in a process that should have been 16 years or 10 years at a different plant into a little over two years' process. So, the essential question we have to ask is NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
37 can this be done prudently? Can this be done safely?
And before we answer that question, NRC is going to be charged with asking and answering some really, really important questions. There are so many questions that this community has. Only a small segment of those relate to NRC in particular.
But the issues that really concern your agency are ISFSI, earthquakes and deferred maintenance in the best of my estimation having been a member of the panel for the last four years.
As you know, the dry cask storage site also called ISFSI is only large enough to accommodate waste that's generated until 2025. If we continue the operation of Diablo Canyon, we don't have enough space on dry cask storage, which means an alternative solution has to be found.
If that alternative solution is the wet storage or the pools, that's always considered something that we wanted to stay away from for the long run. We first talked about seven years to move the waste from the pools to the ISFSI. Then it went to five, then it went to four. Now, we're talking a little bit over two years.
So obviously there's a bias toward getting it out of the pools. Right now, if Diablo continues NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
38 operation, we then risk having that fuel be placed in those pools for a lot longer than two and a half years. So obviously you have to answer that question.
Also, when it comes to earthquakes, we know this a very complex seismic condition area.
There have been serious questions raised by people who have some pretty impressive credentials, and they have looked at the reports that have been prepared by PG&E and reviewed by NRC, and there's some serious questions.
I hope that during these next couple years if the application is actually filed by PG&E that you will take extraordinary care in looking at some of the reviews of those seismic reports by third parties. We can't run this place if it's not safe to do so, and I think we all agree that.
Finally, I just want to mention deferred maintenance, which was an issue that was brought up specifically by the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee very recently.
When I talked to members of the trade, they said in prior years when they shut down the plant for refueling the shortages, they sent out 200 or more people during those outages to do broad scale maintenance.
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39 Over the last couple years as I understand it, only about a couple dozen people are going out.
So that's a real shift in perhaps maintenance and operation. I can't explain that, I don't know, but it's something you need to research and find out.
What didn't we do in the last couple years because we assumed the plant was closing in 2025. If this plant is going to continue beyond 2025, what do we have to do now to really gear up in a very significant way so that we understand the operation is going to be safe.
The future of this community really depends on the NRC taking their solemn oath to protect our community and others around the country, and I hope, and ask, and urge, and expect that you'll take your role extremely safely. But there are some really big questions out there and we're asking you to very seriously consider them.
If these three big issues can't be properly addressed or others, then don't accept the application, don't be a rubberstamp. If it's not appropriate to continue past 2025, then say so. Reach that conclusion if that's the right conclusion.
Anyways, again, thank you so much.
Appreciate your being here. Have a good evening.
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40 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. Are there any other elected official or representative of elected officials in the room with us this evening? I will go to those participating virtually in a minute, but I wanted to do in the room first. Are there any others in the room?
MR. LATHROP: Good evening. My name is Scott Lathrop. I'm a representative of the local Native American, yak tityu tityu yak tilhini tribe in Northern Chumash. I'm the CEO of the ytt Northern Chumash non-profit.
First of all, I'd just like to commend PG&E for their report tonight. I especially liked the section relating to the cultural protection issues.
That's a very important matter for our overall group.
Also, I just wanted to stress whether or not the plant goes forward, continue to operate or whether or not it's decommissioned. Our tribal group is most concerned about the lands.
PG&E did commission a report to kind of zero in on who actual are descendants of this area.
It showed that our tribe are direct descendants of village sites in this area.
So, it's very important to us to do our best to try to regain our homeland, and that's one of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
41 our biggest issues, again, whether or not the plant continues to operate or whether or not it decommissioned.
We look forward to working with PG&E as the process goes forward, either process, definitely working towards protecting those cultural resources on that site. Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. Anyone else in the room?
Okay, I'd now like to go to those elected officials or representative elective officials who are participating virtually this evening who would either like to offer prepared remarks or just to indicate that you're participating in the meeting this evening.
If you would like to be recognized, or quote-unquote stand and be recognized, or to offer prepared remarks and you're participating via Teams, raise your hand. Or if you're participating via phone, hit Star 5. Again, that is Star 5. Once you've been called upon by Sarah, please remember to unmute yourself within Teams or by hitting Star 6 if you're participating via phone.
Again, I would ask that you please identify yourself at the start of your remarks for the sake of the transcription. With that, I'll turn it NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
42 over to Sarah to see if anyone has their hand raised.
MS. LOPAS: Hi, Brett. I do have Linda Seeley, but I'm not sure if she's an elected official.
She's my only hand raised.
Linda, I can enable your microphone.
All right, your microphone is enabled, Linda, if you can go ahead and unmute yourself.
Linda Seeley? You just have to unmute yourself.
And if you don't know how to do that, just kind of -- you do know how to raise your hand, so you should know how to unmute. Let's see. Just kind of move your mic around. You just have to enable your microphone at the bottom of your screen.
All right, Brett. Let's try to go back to Linda after you hear from people in the room, and we'll try Linda again.
MR. KLUKAN: Okay. Thank you, Sarah.
I'll now like to offer an opportunity for any other members of the Diablo Canyon Decommissioning Engagement Panel who would like to offer any personal comments at this time.
Anyone in the room?
Okay, are there any members of the Engagement Panel participating virtually who would NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
43 like to offer personal comments at this time? Again, if you're in Teams raise your hand, or if you're participating via phone hit Star 5. Again, that is Star 5.
MS. LOPAS: Hey, Brett. We're still only seeing Linda.
MR. KLUKAN: Okay.
MS. LOPAS: And we now have Cathy Iwane and Bryan Pickering. I think we have a number of folks from the public that are ready to speak if we want to launch into that.
MR. KLUKAN: Okay, I think we are -- go through a couple final comments and then we will start it up.
Thank you, Sarah.
Again, thank you for those elected officials and representatives who are here with us this evening and who offer prepared remarks. We very much thank you for your participation.
Our intention, as Bruce mentioned, is to try to answer as many of the questions you have related to the topic of Diablo Canyon PSDAR as well as decommissioning in general.
However, again as Bruce noted, if you have questions unrelated to that topic, for example license NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
44 renewal, we would ask that you hold those off until the end of the meeting until we've had an opportunity to address everyone's comments and questions related to decommissioning.
Or if you have questions unrelated to the topics you've heard us bring up earlier for which we have experts with us here, you can always talk to Scott Bernel (phonetic) on behalf of our Office of Public Affairs who's standing the back there in the green shirt.
Our goal tonight is to have a productive and informative dialogue. In order to do so, I would again you to adhere to the ground rules, the civility that I mentioned earlier. Again, I'm going to call one person in the room, and then we'll go to one person participating virtually and back until we've exhausted our list of speakers.
I would ask, given that I don't know how many members of the public are participating virtually tonight and would like to speak, to please limit yourself initially to three minutes with two follow-up questions. Again, that's three minutes and two follow-up questions.
And then if we have time remaining at the end once we've gone through and if time permits, we'll NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
45 offer people an additional opportunity to give further remarks at that time. Really, that's to make sure that we have enough time to accommodate everyone who wants to speak this evening.
With that, we'll go to our first person in room and then we'll go over to Sarah, but the first person I have signed up and would like to speak is Jane Swanson. If you wouldn't mind coming to the microphone here.
And if you have signed up to speak and you can't come to the microphone for whatever reason, I will be happy to bring this microphone to you. Just raise your hand and let me know that when your name is called.
Again, just start with your name and whenever you're ready.
MS. SWANSON: Yes, the microphone is on, okay.
Jane Swanson. I'm spokesperson for San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace. I'd like to parenthetically, don't count this on the time please, identify Linda Seeley who's having trouble getting online. She is a member of the Engagement Panel.
Hopefully, she'll be able to get back with us.
I do want to thank Kara Woodruff very much NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
46 for so eloquently expressing the fundamental links between this plan for decommissioning and the date of closure of this plant. They are so intertwined because it won't work if you change the date of closure.
I have some prepared comments that refer to that link, and then I have a few specifics that were referring to the slides that were shown by PG&E this evening.
So Mothers for Peace appreciates the opportunity to address the NRC as we witness multiple betrayals of trust by PG&E, the governor, the Department of Energy, and the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors. We're counting on the NRC not to follow suit with those individuals and agencies.
Seven years ago, PG&E committed to shut down Diablo by 2025 stating that, and I quote, as a result of the rapidly changing California energy landscape, Diablo Canyon will not be needed at the end of the license period, unquote. PG&E was and is correct in this observation.
But now doing a complete flip flop, PG&E has faded its intent to renege on its promise and apply for federal taxpayer monies to enable continued operations. Governor Newsom initially urged PG&E to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
47 close Diablo in 2025 describing PG&E to the New York Times as caught red-handed, again quoting, over and over again lying, manipulating or misleading the public. They cannot be trusted, unquote.
Clearly, Newsome can't be trusted one bit as he is now leading the parade to keep Diablo open.
Compounding the madness, a three-member majority of our local county board of supervisors sent a letter to Newsom in February, last February, asking him to enable continued operations of Diablo. But that board is the lead agency for decommissioning.
How can we trust the supervisors to conscientiously enforce state requirements for environmental cleanup? I realize you can't answer that question, but I have to speak it. A goodness knows we can't trust PG&E with its history of falsifying records, blowing up neighborhoods with faulty gas pipelines or burning them down with criminal negligence.
Mothers for Peace demands that PG&E keeps its commitment to close Diablo as agreed to by multiple parties in 2016, and we expect the NRC to protect public safety and not the profits of PG&E or the ambitious of politicians. Our organization will continue our 50-year role so far as the watchdog of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
48 both PG&E and the NRC.
I'd like to refer a few things in the presentations made specifically about the decommissioning plans. That 25 millirem requirement of the NRC for remaining environmental contamination.
I hope I'm saying that right. It's quite interesting that most plants go for a much lower standard.
I've read that many of the eastern plants got down to 10 millirems, and I think you just said that there were others that got lower than that. I would like to note why the NRC's standard is not more demanding. It seems rather lax if it's so possible to get to 10 millirems or lower, why is your standard so lax?
Slide 7 of the PG&E presentation says the year 2067 is when PG&E will transfer all nuclear waste to the Department of Energy, quote, for storage at permanent offsite repository. I hate to break it to you, but there isn't going to be one then.
The fact that the decommissioning plans are counting on something that is pure fiction, wishful thinking. This is too important to make your plans on the basis of hope and wishful thinking and theory.
We know that the Department of Energy is NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
49 legally obligated to do those things, but there's no reason to think they're going to do it. They've changed the date too many times, and there's no end in sight.
Slide 9 was about barges. Wow. How risky can you get? That stuff, high-level nuclear waste on a barge? Now and then things do sink into the Pacific Ocean, and if you get water into those containment vessels -- the contents are highly radioactive. If you get water in there, you got an opportunity for criticality to happen. I can't even imagine how awful that would be.
That sounds like wishful thinking, too.
We'll just put it on the barge because then we don't need the trucks. Well, you shouldn't have generated in the first place is the message from Mothers for Peace. But now that you've got it, no fair taking the easy way out. It might save money, but the risk is too high.
I'm also very concerned by the phrase, plans will continue to evolve. It's on numerous slides. Slide 16 I wrote down, but there were others, too. I take that to mean we reserve the right to wiggle out of this. That's the way I read that.
Continue to evolve, that's what it says to me in the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
50 light of what's been happening.
If PG&E were declaring its intention to apply for those federal funds, if the governor wasn't pushing to keep the thing running, then I wouldn't be sensitive to it. But in the current real world, it looks very suspicious to me, and I need to voice that.
If you can react to that at some point in some way, I'd be very grateful. Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
Next, we're going to go --
MR. WATSON: Brett, can we respond to a couple of --
(Simultaneous speaking.)
MR. KLUKAN: Oh, sure. Sure. I'm sorry.
MR. WATSON: First of all, let me say thank you, Ms. Swanson, for your questions and your comments.
The 25 millirem requirement in the NRC regulations is not just 25 millirem per year, but it states the concept and implementation of the ALARA principle, which is As Low As Reasonably Achievable.
So, the limit may be here, but by the time you're done, which is the 11 power plants that have completed decommissioning have ended up being between one and three millirem per year. So, here's the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
51 limit, but they're well below it, okay.
compare that internationally, the dose constraint they call it instead of limit, is 30 millirem. So, we're below the international level, and we actually because of the ALARA practice generally get way below that, below the 25 millirem per year limit, okay. I hope that clarifies that for you.
I think the issue with the barges is not high-level waste at this point. It's the transportation of low-level waste. I will mention that spent fuel is transported throughout the world by ocean.
But in this case, I think PG&E is talking about amount of truck traffic, which was a comment I heard previously here when I attended some meetings here about reducing the amount of truck traffic in the area, and barging is one way to do that.
That's also done throughout the world also, barging of low-level radioactive material.
There's many other more, I'll say, hazardous materials that are put on ships and barged around, but that's I think the intent was to reduce the amount of truck traffic, especially for large quantities of bulk material such as concrete and soil.
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52 We take the comment about the PSDAR and the plans to evolve because technology has changed.
They may be able to improve the schedule because of new technologies that have evolved. We've seen some tremendous changes over the years with the dismantling activities.
The decommissioning of the actual reactor internals, that technology has changed dramatically over the years and is done much faster than it used to and is very effective and saves a lot of exposure and time for the workers.
I take the word evolves in this from that standpoint, and I hope they're not the way that you're interpreting them. I guess I would say the glass is half full for me on that one, but I can understand your particular situation. I hope that clarifies a few of your comments. Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you, Bruce. Thank you again for your comment.
We're next going to go to Linda Seeley, who is my understanding is a member of the engagement panel who's participating virtually.
My understanding, Linda, that you are unmuted. So, whenever you're ready, please feel free.
MS. LOPAS: Linda will still need to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
53 unmute herself. She has access to her microphone.
She just has to unmute herself.
MR. KLUKAN: All right, Linda. So next to your -- it's funny, I do this every day at work. And then when I don't have it in front of me, I can't tell you where the button is.
MS. LOPAS: So, it should, Linda, it should be at the bottom of your screen if you're logging in from the web, your unmute. Yes, you just have to hit that microphone icon. Just hit it once, and it should go green for you.
And if you don't see any controls, move your mouse around your screen. Sometimes that happens. Worst comes to worst, you can always call in with a phone and press Star 5 to raise your hand, and that might be easier.
All right, I'm not seeing Linda being able to unmute herself.
MR. KLUKAN: I apologize, Ms. Seeley, we will try to come back to you.
But Sarah, can we go to the next person or the first person who's raised their hand to participate virtually.
MS. LOPAS: Yes. I have just enabled Cathy Iwane's microphone.
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54 Cathy, you can go ahead and unmute yourself.
You too will need to unmute, Cathy.
Brett, if folks are having trouble with unmuting themselves on Teams -- maybe, Marlayna, maybe we could show the call-in number for -- let's see.
Let me find the call-in number. Folks can call in using their cellphone, and that might be easier if you're having trouble finding the mute button. Let's see.
MR. KLUKAN: Again, sometimes the issue is
-- boy, are hybrid meetings amazing.
MS. LOPAS: Mm-hmm.
MR. KLUKAN: Is that sometimes you need to make sure that your microphone is enabled on your computer. You all didn't know you were coming for an IT session tonight, did you? Well, lucky you.
MS. LOPAS: Right.
MR. KLUKAN: So, try that as well. But again, as Sarah suggests, we're going to work on putting that number up there so people can call in via the phone, which is easy. You just hit Star 5 and then Star 6.
Sarah, why don't we try going to the next person, maybe?
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55 MS. LOPAS: Okay. Let's see. We're going to go to Jan Dietrick.
So, Jan, I'm going to allow your microphone. Your microphone is enabled, Jan, and you should be able to unmute yourself.
MS. DIETRICK: Yes, thank you. I appreciate the report. I'm with the 350 Ventura County Climate Hub.
I've been following the advocacy of Friends of the Earth on this issue and others who have made it clear that the Diablo Canyon is a dangerous, I'm quoting, destructive and expensive hangover from an outdated energy production process. A disaster such as from a predicted high magnitude --
(Simultaneous speaking.)
MS. DIETRICK: -- would affect -- devastate the central coast and affect us in Ventura County.
Governor Newsom should really speak the truth. The root cause of the August 2020 power outage was not a shortage of energy generation. It was human error by the system operator who admitted not forecasting the need or ordering enough energy in time. Meeting peak demand in heat waves and say shopping and distribution issue, and not an energy production issue.
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56 People need to hear the truth. If any of you listening are among the many who are pushing this false narrative about energy scarcity as an excuse to extend the closing of the nuclear power plant, listen.
This is irresponsible fear mongering. We have the technology. We do not need Diablo Canyon in order to ensure supply of clean, safe, renewable energy and efficiency. Thank you very much for this forum for us to express ourselves.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you for participating and joining us this evening.
We will now go to the next person signed up to speak with us in the room evening, and that is David Weisman. Again, that is David Weisman.
MR. WEISMAN: And I'll only be speaking about decommissioning.
Good evening. David Weisman, Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility. PG&E is a $51.2 million-a-year CEO who arrived in California from Michigan in 2021 peppers her public pronouncements with gushy vows of the company's devotion to safety and well-being of our hometowns.
But when PG&E specified the radiation cleanup standard it plans to apply to decommissioning Diablo Canyon, it chose the loosest limit allowable by NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
57 the NRC of 25 millirems per year rather than the 60 percent tighter standard of 10 millirem per year that the NRC has agreed to enforce in New York, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine. Say what?
In written testimony before the California Public Utilities Commission, PG&E says the 25 millirem standard, quote, adequately protects the health and safety of the general public and that the company, quote, very likely will achieve lower than 25 millirems, quote, at no additional cost to the customers as expected.
This blather is eerily similar to the empty assurances PG&E gave regarding its gas pipeline inspections before the 2010 San Bruno Catastrophe, its vegetation management practices before the 2017 Wine Country Fires, and its transmission tower maintenance program before the 2018 Paradise Fire.
Why won't PG&E formally embrace the tighter 10 millirem requirement? Because doing so will create an unmistakable bright line that cannot be crossed for determining whether PG&E eventually reduces residual radioactivity at Diablo Canyon to levels as low as reasonably achievable.
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58 which PG&E would prefer to simply self-certify that it tried hard to get below 25 millirems.
And yet as has been mentioned, and as PG&E knows, a ten millirem target is credible. Its recently achieved a six millirem decommissioning level at the notoriously dirty and contaminated Humboldt Bay Nuclear Power Plant.
Despite major claims about federal preemption, PG&E has acknowledged in the CPUC decommissioning proceeding that nuclear plant licensees in other states have agreed to a lower limit than the 25 millimeter standard and that the NRC's termination plan process and data can be used to validate that the lower level is met. Why not at Diablo Canyon?
From PG&E's perspective, aren't our hometowns just as deserving as those in New York, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine? PG&E has openly acknowledged that public perceptions of contamination may result in resistance to certain future uses of the Diablo Canyon property, a dark cloud over the visionary reuse plans the company cheerleads in its community outreach.
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59 the local Cal Poly campus leading development of a, quote, world-class tech innovation park at the future decommissioned nuclear plant site.
Earlier this year, PG&E completed its five-year criminal probation for the San Bruno felony convictions. Quote, during these five years of criminal probation, we have tried hard to rehabilitate PG&E, wrote U.S. District Judge William Alsup.
Quote, as the supervising district judge, however, I must acknowledge failure. While on probation, PG&E has set at least 31 wildfires, burnt nearly 1.5 million acres, burned 23,956 structures and killed 113 Californians. In these five years, PG&E has gone on a crime spree and will emerge from probation as a continuing menace to California, end quote.
Of course, PG&E's CEO has taken strong exception to Judge Alsop's assessment. She says she came to PG&E in 2021, quote, for one reason. To help this company make it right, and make it safe for the people it serves. The truth is that we are not the same company as we were a year ago either structurally or culturally, end quote.
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60 Diablo Canyon sure looks like the same old PG&E, indifferent to the commonsense expectations of its customers and protected by a labyrinth of government enablers.
Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
MR. WATSON: Brett, I'd like to respond to a few of the comments.
Number one, the NRC did approve the -- did the review of the post-shutdown decommissioning activities reports for the Pilgrim plant in Massachusetts, the Vermont Yankee Plant obviously in Vermont and of course the Indian Point plants in New York. And actually the final license termination plan of the ten millirem limit was in the Maine Yankee submittal.
Those were all created by settlement agreements with the state and the licensee. The NRC had no part of those negotiations. And they were arrived at exclusively between the state and the licensee. In that case, the states requested ten millirem for those sites.
When they did that, the licensees with the exception of Maine submitted their PSDAR with the ten millirem limit in it. They still have not submitted NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
61 their license termination plans, which will be formal document where they will establish the final residual radioactivity dose limits that they're going to agree to.
So as the regulator, 10 is less than 25, so we approved those types of documents. I'm not going to defend PG&E in this case, but all of those plants including the Humboldt Bay decommissioning were all less than three millirem at the end of the decommissioning. That's the practice of ALARA. As we mentioned, As Low As Reasonably Achievable.
Our inspection program takes that into account during the decommissioning process where our inspectors will be there to observe and make sure and also do their own independent measurements to make sure that the licensee is measuring the soils and buildings or whatever it is accurately, and that they will be compliant with the license termination plan when that is submitted so we can terminate the license.
The other part of that I want to bring up is that as part of our decommissioning process, in addition to the inspectors performing surveys, we have an agreement with an independent contractor which is Oak Ridge Associated Universities.
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62 They have a group there called the Oak Ridge Institute of Science and Education, and we have a contract with them where we bring out experts to do verification surveys. They're independent of the NRC.
They're specialists at doing these surveys, and so we will bring them into to do some of the more critical what we call Class 1 areas, the areas that were previously highly contaminated.
And we will verify through that independent process that the licensee is compliant with their LTP and with the residual radioactive concentrations to terminate the license.
Like I said, all 11 of the reactors so far that have completed decommissioning have been around a few millirem. Typically, one to three. And the most recent one was slightly below three for Humboldt Bay.
I just wanted to make sure that the states can play a role in the decommissioning process whether they agree or not to do that, but the NRC will ensure that the 25 millirem plus the ALARA program is implemented as required by the regulations. Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you, Bruce.
Sarah, we will go to the next virtual NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
63 participant.
MS. LOPAS: Yes.
So, Linda Seeley, I have been told that you have called in. I believe I have enabled your microphone. All you have to do now, Linda, is press Star 6 on your phone.
Linda, are you there? I saw you hit Star
- 5. You there?
MS. IWANE: No, this is Cathy Iwane.
MS. LOPAS: Oh, hi, Cathy. Okay, great.
Well, we have you, then. I see you've been in line for a while, so go ahead. Thank you.
MS. IWANE: Okay.
If you don't mind, I don't mean to complain but this is a consistent problem. You have made it so that you disenabled the chat. And when I go -- I was on my computer, waiting, fine. The two numbers that you have provided on the NRC thing, one of them was Marlayna (phonetic) or whatever her name is.
I called her. Her phone is completely --
she's unavailable, and Verizon said they won't even take my call. The other man I spoke to said he would speak to the organizer, and her name is -- what's her name, the chief organizer for tonight.
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64 The system when you guys worked this, I went to unmute myself on the computer, and this is for all the people going through what I'm doing, and it says only the presenters or NRC staff can unmute you.
And you're sitting there telling Linda Seeley to please unmute yourself. And then you're telling us all to call in.
So, if you can't practice this ahead of time -- this has happened every single time I've joined an NRC meeting, and it's very, very, frustrating. Okay, I'm going to get onto my comments.
Would that be agreeable?
MR. KLUKAN: Sure. And we'll explain again after your comment how the system works. But again, please feel free to go with your comment.
MS. IWANE: Okay, wonderful. Wonderful.
My name is Cathy Iwane. I head up a group in San Diego called the -- it's the Group for Nuclear Safety. What we're doing is -- I'm just trying to speak to everyone there who's concerned about safely decommissioning Diablo Canyon.
I won't even get into why it should definitely be closing, although the PG&E joint proposal in 2016 there was a settlement with union environmental groups resolved years of litigation and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
65 regulator interventions. This included just transition for Diablo workers and local communities.
PG&E decisions to close Diablo Canyon was Diablo's generation of energy not needed with PG&E-led reductions to the CCAs, energy efficiency and rooftop solar. Diablo's inflexible baseload of generation blocks renewable energy, so why invest in that?
Solar growth is already outpacing California RPS, which is Renewable Portfolio Standard targets. Plus, it's a lower cost to the consumer.
That's why I agree with why it definitely should be closing, but here we have the NRC telling us up front tonight that they will be there during the high-risk procedures.
I have been -- I'm a Fukushima evacuee in 2012, and unbeknownst to me I came and now I live 35 miles away from San Onofre. It is closed down, but the NRC was nowhere to be found when a 50-ton thin-walled cask was hanging on a quarter-inch lip for 20 minutes, and the operators that day had no idea how to load it safely into the ISFSI, which is underground.
And yet the NRC said, you're safe with us.
But there was no NRC person there. We have Mike Levin, our representative who has consistently time and time again communicated with the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
66 NRC and also other legislators about having a full-time NRC inspector on site. This request has had no response whatsoever.
We would love to think that the NRC is looking out for our safety, but we're looking at the example of what happened at San Onofre. We have 73 canisters buried under grade 108 feet from the water during climate change in a tsunami inundation zone.
I know very little about the Orano systems scheduled to be the container of choice at Diablo; however, it's really, really important to understand that our group had gone through a 2.206 review petition process with the NRC asking for a public meeting on why there was never a public confidence-instilling risk study done on these canisters under grade in the event of a tsunami or flooding.
We know that they are convectionally cooled, and we know that any sort of flooding of 73 canisters will enable a bunch of salt, sand, sea gunk and debris to be fully just overcoming that ISFSI.
And yet, the NRC never required a prototype of a canister or anything of the sort to be checked if that cooling system were to be disenabled, which a tsunami surely would after 32 hours3.703704e-4 days <br />0.00889 hours <br />5.291005e-5 weeks <br />1.2176e-5 months <br />. This is the sort of thing that our NRC is purporting to be NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
67 protecting the environmental resources as well as our communities.
And yet in 2012, our communities sent a paleoseismic feature article made by Gerald Kuhn. It was a seismic study done by a geologist. Everyone who's listening can find this available online at www.sciencedirects.com ???. It's entitled, paleoseismic features as indicators of earthquake hazards in north coastal San Diego County, California, USA.
My colleagues sent this to the NRC in 2012, April. He sent it to the technical assistant of a certain NRC commissioner. It has been buried. We filed a FOIA request. No one can find it. This study essentially says that any coastal ISFSI or nuclear waste dump is a threat to the environment, and it's a threat to the communities.
It's very, very interesting that there has been no answer from the NRC on this. We've waited since February of this year. We've also asked the NRC to please hold a public meeting on these risks at San Onofre. And we've been completely blindsided with, what you're worried about is non-credible. And that's all they say, it's non-credible.
Meanwhile in July of last year, we had the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
68 California Coastal Commission tell us that they will under -- they've held their noses, but it was ten commissioners saying, well, we have to let Southern Cal Edison do their I&P, which is an Inspection and Maintenance plan. That was still with canisters that we never consented to be a waste dump for.
These canisters are unable to be monitored. They're welded shut. They're not meant for short-term storage. Meanwhile, San Clemente City Council has said, hey, we don't consent to being the home to all 3.6 million pounds of waste. And I don't mean to cut everyone down, but I'm saying this as a forewarning to all of the locals that live within a 50-mile zone of Diablo Canyon.
This is what you have to look forward to in your decommissioning. God forbid this plant gets any sort of relicensing to go on, but this is what you have to look forward to. People are paying attention.
Experts are looking at this.
And you know what? People are moving out because we know that the NRC nor the licensee has our vibrant economy and our vibrant food economy nor our resources in their best interests.
So, I really, really hope that the NRC is listening to what I'm talking about. I hope that you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
69 can work out how to handle these meetings in the future. It's been my honor to be able to make a comment tonight. Thank you very much.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much for your comment and for participating tonight.
I just want to spend a moment because we are having these difficulties. I don't of course don't mean to make light of them. But the way this works is this, and it's the same for Zoom and the same for Teams. We can unmute you if you're participating and virtually meeting. You can then unmute yourself, but we -- think about what that would do if we could just turn on your microphone for you without your consent.
That's not how it should work, so it's a two-part system. It's like a door in a hotel to adjoining rooms. One side opens the door, but then the other side has to open the door as well. And so, we allow you turn on your microphone, and then you can turn it on.
The reason we set it up this way, and this is the same for government the uses Zoom for Gov is, so we don't have people come on and derail the meeting. That's why we bring everyone in on mute. We unmute them as it's their turn to speak and whatnot so NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
70 that we can maintain order to the meeting.
Quite frankly, that's -- I've been in meetings where things have gone very wrong in Zoom.
This is why we do it. It's not because we don't trust you -- well, I guess it is.
(Laughter.)
MR. KLUKAN: But it's for your benefit so we don't have to deal with those kind of situations, and the same thing goes with chat as well. However, with that said, we are learning. We are all learning how to do this right and how to get better and continuing evolving this process.
So please fill out -- and I would encourage you to please fill out a feedback form. You can find them in the NRC website, give ideas for how we can do hybrid meeting betters. And I'm personally invested in your ideas and solutions for how we can make this better for you and for those participating virtually. Please fill those out. I would really appreciate it.
So, with no further ado, I apologize for taking up some time there. We will go to Bruce Severance who is also a member of the Engagement Panel.
MR. SEVERANCE: Hello. Is my mic on?
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71 Yes.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak.
I'm a member of the Engagement Panel, but I am not representing their views. I have some affiliations with Central Coast Community Energy and with the SLO Climate Coalition as well as Cal Poly's Institute for Climate Leadership and Resilience and the research collaborative that has been recently formed there.
So I'd say I've done quite a bit of research on issues related to grid harmonization and grid resilience and published a paper to the CEC docket a couple years back wherein it -- running some numbers that looked as though if we had the ability to plug just 60 percent of the Teslas into California's grid at the time that we had the brownouts in August of 2020, we wouldn't have had the brownouts.
So, we've been talking about vehicle to grid technology for over 30 years. I was an electric vehicle lead designer for a company that was building prototypes starting in 1993 until about 2005. And I'm just amazed that we've been talking about vehicle to grid since 1989, and here we are 30 years plus later, and we still don't have it.
There's a fascinating economic analysis by a -- the reason this is so relevant is we're talking NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
72 about all these expensive fixes and extending this plant and all the potential externalities and safety issues related to that.
And there are these other simple solutions that if we can accelerate them and bring them to market quickly, which we certainly can do, it to me is far vastly more practical, more economic, better for the general public, protecting the general good. And I don't really understand why we haven't been able to get there.
So, there's a wonderful analysis by an engineer out in Colorado, Ken Regelson, who looked at vehicle to grid as a solution compared to stationary lithium ion utility battery backup to provide grid resilience.
And the costs are fractional compared to battery backup because the vehicle is amortizing the cost of that investment, and it's providing a different purpose except for on the occasions when you actually need that backup.
So, you don't have a battery sitting there for three to five years before you suddenly need it for an event like that. The backups are always there, but you don't have to pay for it. So why can't we accelerate that?
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73 We need a Marshall Plan for dealing with grid resilience and grid harmonization that really takes a much closer look at much more viable and economic alternatives. The Department of Energy should be spearheading this. I'm not saying that you guys should be addressing this, but please take this back to Washington and talk to them.
The other thing is that there is now a national conference on green hydrogen. That's amazing. We've been talking about the hydrogen economy. I read the first paper on that in 1985 that came out of Princeton, and everybody said it was going to happen in 10 to 15 years. And of course, it was always unobtainium.
Now, we're actually at the point where the cost of green hydrogen is dropping below blue hydrogen next year. These solutions are much more economic.
And we have 17 once-through cooling plants located on the coast in California that are either decommissioned already or they're slated for decommissioning by 2029.
And every single one of those could be --
has grid infrastructure going to them that represent a sunk cost once we plug something into it, why the heck aren't doing hydrogen gas peaker plants. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is manufacturing this type of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
74 technology.
It's a hybrid system that will run on natural gas or hydrogen, so you don't have to have a chicken-and-the-egg problem. You can run it on gas until you're ready with the hydrogen infrastructure.
We need to be thinking outside the box where we don't have a chicken-and-the-egg problem, we don't have public risk, and we're not investing in alternatives that can produce hazardous results. I would just beg you to consider these alternatives.
The purpose of the research collaborative at Cal Poly is to actually engage in economic analysis of these types of alternatives and try to present reasonable solutions for local green infrastructure projects that are site-specific.
Hopefully considering local government agencies such as the Board of Supervisors as a client and being able to present a dozen different site-specific alternatives so a government agency can pick the best one with minimal risk.
And using student resources, and we now have a $10 million grant to get some other interns working on feasibility studies at no cost to government agencies. That idea could be done on a national basis as well.
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75 Please take these ideas back to the Department of Energy and really consider how we can speed the transition to a resilient grid in a way that can't be disqualified or invalidated by Republican arguments.
Forgive me, I'm a conservative, but I'm going to say that I feel that you've got to look at the science where climate mitigation is concerned.
That's why we're considering extending operations at Diablo. So, let's fix the problem a different way.
I think actually these alternatives are better solutions for PG&E as well. So instead of looking for ways to keep the doors open here, let's fix three problems at once and look at other technological solutions. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
Sarah, we'll now go to your next queued up speaker participating virtually.
MS. LOPAS: And I think, Linda, you should be all set.
MS. SEELEY: I am. Thank you so much. I also want to say that the technology did not work. It wasn't that I didn't know how to unmute. It did not allow me to unmute myself. I think that may be the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
76 problem with a lot of people.
MS. LOPAS: Yes.
MS. SEELEY: But anyway, thank you so much for allowing me to speak for just a minute.
I am a member of the Decommissioning Engagement Panel, but tonight I want to talk as myself because I want to express to you about our community.
We're living in an altered state here.
It's like cognitive dissonance. We're here at this meeting listening to the plans for shutting down the plant. Brandy gave a great presentation. And at the same time, the pro-nuclear forces have gathered their strength together.
The issue really isn't about keeping Diablo Canyon. It's about the future of nuclear power in the United States, I think. This has taken on a role that's greater than what it appears to be on the surface. In my heart, I don't think that the people who work at Diablo Canyon really want to extend the operating life.
I think if you would poll them secretly that they would say, let's just do this in orderly way so that we keep our promise to our community so that we save our honor, integrity and so that we can create an example for the rest of the country to be able to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
77 go through something rational, thoughtful, cooperative with the greater interest of the community in mind here.
Because the fact of the matter is that we don't need Diablo Canyon's power. And so that's what we call a red herring. This has arisen in us, the reason that we're having this intense discussion this evening is because it's brought to the surface this cognitive dissonance that we're living under.
We have so many safety questions at Diablo Canyon. So many earthquakes questions. As Kara so beautifully said earlier, there are very highly qualified seismologists who do not agree with the assessment of the PG&E seismologists.
We don't know about the reactor vessel for Unit 1, NRC. We need to know the condition of that reactor vessel in order for that to keep ongoing.
They have been deferring maintenance ever since, I believe, 2018. I think they kept up all the maintenance, but they've done work around since deferred. I understand that. That only made sense with the idea in mind of shutting it down.
I hope that the NRC can really step up to the plate here and not accept an application for keeping it open without adequate preparation for the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
78 relicensing. I hope that you would not allow this plant to continue to operate past without having an active license.
If the license expires in '24 and '25, if those two licenses expire, don't allow them to keep on running without proper application. Okay, that's all I have to say. Thank you so much for your time.
I hope you come back because we're going to have a lot of questions for you. Maybe not for the decommissioning group from the NRC, maybe you'll have to concoct a different group for us to talk to, but we need to talk to you. Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. I'm sorry to hear about the technical difficulties you're experiencing and for any others online who are experiencing the same difficulties. We know that there was a nationwide Microsoft Teams outage the other night. We thought that was resolved. Maybe there's still some lingering effects. Who knows? I don't know.
But needless to say, for those of you who are using the system and it's just not working for you, we extend our fullest apologies. With no further ado, we're going to go to our next in-person speaker with us in the room and that is Marty Brown. Marty NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
79 Brown.
MS. BROWN: Good evening. My name is Marty Brown, and San Luis Obispo has been my home since 1972. Thank you for coming to listen to our concerns, and we do have concerns about the rushed proposal to extend the operating license of the two reactors at Diablo Canyon. We need answers.
If indeed PG&E applies for licensing extension, how many years would this be? We need a fixed closure date. We already have well over 3 million pounds of high-level radioactive waste sitting in a seismically active site with nowhere to go.
Adding to this risk would be dangerously irresponsible.
Seventy years ago, Americans were promised there would be a safe repository for the nuclear waste across this country. We're still waiting for that promise to be fulfilled.
Blackouts. Now, our governor is so concerned about blackouts. If anything, Diablo power is a roadblock to clean, alternative energy distribution. Millions of California residents, cities and counties have signed on to join community choice aggregations, including every city in San Luis Obispo County.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
80 This has taken a bite out of PG&E's profit margins plus all the sizable repairs and upgrades needed to obtain relicensing and keep it online. Last year, the independent systems operator had to ship power for 500,000 Californians out of state when we needed it most during the summer months.
The reactors are not flexible. You just can't shut them down when there is an overload of electrons in the lines. Renewables are ready to take over. The California Public Utilities Commission last year approved a historic procurement of 11,500 megawatts of new electricity resources by 2026.
Separately, about 4,500 megawatts of capacity has been added to the grid over the past year, mostly from battery storage, nearly enough to replace two Diablo Canyons. Keeping Diablo operating beyond the agreed-upon closure dates will jeopardize renewables coming online.
Once-through cooling can also jeopardize the designation of the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary that not only San Luis Obispo residents have been planning for so long, but our economy would be stimulated by additional tourist trade, new businesses and scholastic and scientific benefits that would engender.
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81 And cost. How much would the license extension cost ratepayers. Cost estimates have been scarce, and history shows they always rise beyond estimates in the nuclear industry. Financial costs are one thing, but the cost to health and environment are much more important.
And for us to be burdened with extra risk and waste, especially when it is just a roadblock and not an asset, is just not fair to us and our grandchildren's grandchildren.
An offshore wind project is slated along with the largest storage facility in the nation will be developed in our county this fall. It's exciting, providing many head-of-household jobs with no radioactive waste left behind.
San Luis Obispo County has received $85 million in closure funding. We need that protected.
A clear plan to protect the 12,000 acres of pristine surrounding lands as thousands of county residents have specified their desire to have done.
So, our dream initiative. The plant needs to close as planned in 2024 and '25 with its dedicated, knowledgeable employees still in place.
It's time to turn the lights out on those last two reactors in California. Thank you for listening.
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82 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much for your comments this evening and for participating in the meeting.
Okay, Sarah, we will go to the next virtual participant, please.
MS. LOPAS: All right.
Ryan Pickering, you should be able to enable your microphone.
MR. PICKERING: Thank you, everyone.
My name is Ryan Pickering from Berkeley, California. I'm calling representing myself with no industry energy money. I was a solar panel installer in California for 12 years, and I left that job last year to study the energy grid in California.
I want to thank the NRC for putting on this meeting and leading the clean energy movement in the United States. I want to thank PG&E for their excellent operations of Diablo Canyon Power Plant, one of the greatest nuclear power plants in human history.
And I want to say to the anti-nuclear people who have called in that young people want nuclear energy, and we will see you at the ballot box.
And I am embarrassed by you going over three minutes and abusing the privilege of democracy.
And you are not acting with humility or NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
83 courage or honesty or integrity, and you may follow up with me, Ryan Pickering, if you'd like to talk about this further because I'm interested in finding common ground because young people deserve clean energy in the United States of America.
I have three comments. Number one, there is a tribe named yak tityu tityu yak tilhini Northern Chumash. It is their claim to the land, and PG&E has discussed with them a claim to the land.
I want the NRC record to show that why yak tityu tityu yak tilhini known in shorthand ytt, have a claim on this land and have interests in it. And they were left out of the 2018 agreement.
My second comment is that the NRC should consider cutting comments short at three minutes to allow equity amongst all folks who are trying to call in and to avoid people who cannot say what they're trying to say in under three minutes.
And my third point is I want to make it known that there is in existence Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee. It is a three-person expert panel called DCISC. And at a decommissioning meeting centered around storage vendors, the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee committed to researching the differences between Orano's storage NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
84 system and Holtec's storage system. And changing from Holtec to Orano represents significant site changes that may not be necessary.
And an independent safety committee is now looking into this. They said may take a few months to come up with their conclusion, and I would hope that the NRC would respect California's process that we set up for these reactors.
Thank you, everyone. Keep up the good work, and God bless America.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
I admit, I am a faulty timekeeper. Most of you went over three minutes, most of you by double, but I don't want to cut you off because I don't want to be that person. But at the same time recognizing that if you go over your three minutes, there's a good chance someone may not get to speak when it comes 9:00 tonight. So, I put that on you.
But I'm not here to just cut you off. I don't want that to be that kind of conversation.
Based on the number of speakers we have, if you try to keep it to three minutes, we'll definitely get it seems like everyone in. So, think about that moving forward. All right, with that, Sarah -- oh, it's my turn. Excuse me. I will now have Daryl Gale NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
85 (phonetic). Daryl Gale, please.
MS. GALE: I'm Daryl Gale.
The citizens of California do not want our beaches contaminated, especially the residents who live near and around Diablo Canyon and San Onofre.
We are against losing the surf and beach tourism, restaurants, hotels and real estate for 600,000 years due to one crack or mishandled flimsy canister, a tsunami or an earthquake upon which both plants straddle numerous documented faults.
We must have a hot cell for both plants to repackage and contain any problems so they can be repaired and moved off our heavily populated coast whenever the federal government creates an inland underground repository.
The public safety of the 40 million California residents have been completely ignored in favor of utility and industry lobbying. We must have a hot cell.
So, I don't want to just complain. I have two suggestions. The federal funds that we keep talking about. So, can PG&E get some federal funding and buy us a hot cell for up here? Maybe the NRC can tell you them a hot cell. And once you figure out how to get the hot cell please bring -- tell Edison into NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
86 it so SoCal Edison can then have a hot cell so we can eventually move this stuff away.
And alongside of that, maybe both PG&E and SoCal Edison can buy some concrete and digging equipment, and maybe they can get some digging construction work going way out in the desert and start looking for a place to move the stuff.
Let's keep thinking about moving it off the two beach areas. So, I'm not trying to be snarky to be funny. I really would like to come up with some out-of-the-back solutions, get this stuff away from the encroaching sea level rise.
Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much for your comments this evening and for coming to the meeting.
Sarah, I will turn to you for our next virtual participant.
MS. LOPAS: All right.
Alice McNally, you should be able to unmute yourself.
MS. McNALLY: Hi, can you hear me?
MS. LOPAS: We can.
MS. McNALLY: Great.
My name is Alice McNally. I'm from Del Mar, California, and I am one of those unfortunate NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
87 souls that does live within a 50-mile radius of San Onofre. The NRC mission statement is protecting people and the environment, then why don't you do it?
The NRC allows the industry to police itself and continue to put profit above safety. The NRC does not require the highest safety measures. Why not?
At Diablo Canyon, ASME industry standards are not met, dry transfer facilities necessary for inspection, repair and offloading fuel when cooling pools are not operational are not required. And this is the case at San Onofre. Our cooling pools are no longer operational.
Diablo Canyon is 37 years old, built on earthquake fault lines. And worse, it's an investor-owned utility with a complete disregard for safety.
Close it.
The NRC claims to be 100 percent funded by the Congress. But because cost recovery relies on 95 percent of their annual budget from licensing, regulatory fees such as waivers and exemptions from the industry, is this why the industry gets away with murder?
Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
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88 It seems like we have a lot of participants in the meeting tonight who have comments on San Onofre. Thank you for participating this evening in the meeting.
With that said, if your comments focus solely on San Onofre, I would ask that you hold off until the end of the meeting if we have time remaining just to make sure that those who have comments specifically on Diablo Canyon have an opportunity to speak this evening.
So, with that said, we will now move to our next in-person speaker, which is Betty Windholt (phonetic).
MS. WINDHOLT: Thank you. My name is Betty Windholt. I live in Morro Bay within that 50-mile radius of the power plant.
As a 37-year resident, I've moved here when that plant had already been built, looked forward to when it would be closing. Hopefully, that will still happen.
Also, as a resident and a worker, I'm not always free to attend these meetings, so I want you to know that I very much agree with and appreciate the people who have spoken to you who represent my views as well in terms of our concerns about the area. And NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
89 so, I back up everything that they've said. And they're very knowledgeable. I'm very impressed with their knowledge.
As for me as a normal common citizen, what I heard tonight are two things that I hope that you will take seriously. And one of those was the comment about these 25 numbers, the millirem.
And that I don't know if you set that or someone else sets that, but what I've heard tonight is like why don't you lower that? So, I'm just going to leave it at that. Whether it's for Diablo, which I would hope, or in general. It seems to me common sense since you've been able to do that in other places.
The second one was in terms of inspections and how often that will happen for Diablo and who will be here and for how long. I think as a common person, I assumed you would be on site the whole time, but it sounds like that's not true.
And if you're not, how often will you be here and for how long? And do you have the authority to stop things or to make things happen that aren't going correct? Thanks.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
MR. WATSON: Let me go back to the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
90 millirem limit. That was a criteria established by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, meaning the Commission established that limit based on numerous studies all around the world, and it's what they came up.
Like I said, the international standard is 30 millirem, a little higher. But we also implemented the requirement for ALARA, and that means As Low As Reasonably Achievable. So, with the implementation of that, these numbers have come down very low for the majority of the power plants, especially first 11 that have been decommissioned.
With that, it wasn't the staff's decision.
It was the Commission's decision on the actual limit.
With respect to the inspection program, I'll let John Monninger, ask him to make some comments on that.
MR. MONNINGER: Thank you very much. I'm John Monninger from our Region IV office in Arlington, Texas. The NRC's inspection program, if you think about our inspectors, we generally what we have resident inspectors.
They are individuals that live in the community. One of those individuals is here tonight.
For an operating facility such as Diablo, we have two resident inspectors. The resident and then the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
91 senior.
Assuming that the plant does proceed to a shutdown, generally the NRC's model for inspection changes within the first year or so there'll be one resident then for the year, and then after that time period we don't have dedicated inspectors that live in the community.
With that said, we have a whole body of inspectors that come out to the site quite frequently.
Whether those inspections are for our RAB (phonetic) protection, when they're for ongoing activities with cask loadings, whether it's for fuel movement, whether it's for pouring concrete pads, et cetera.
We have a staff within our office in Arlington, Texas, that come out here -- well, that would come out here quite frequently during the active decommissioning period.
If the license was ultimately terminated and the only thing left was the ISFSI pad way up on the bluff, the frequency then of those inspections is different than when then plan is going through active decommissioning. But there is a very active inspection program that does occur.
The change that occurs for us really whether we have resident inspectors versus what we NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
92 call the regional-based inspectors. In the NRC, there's been interest in that topic for many years.
We put our position out there on that. It's not unique to this facility. It's come up in our other regions also. I do thank you for the comment.
MR. KLUKAN: Hi, again. Thank you for your comments and your questions and for participating this evening.
Next up, Sarah, can we have our next virtual speaker, please.
MS. LOPAS: Yes.
Louis Opter, your microphone is enabled.
MR. OPTER: Thank you very much for the occasion to comment. I'm Louis Opter. I live in San Francisco, and I moved to California from France about ten years ago. I work as a software engineer, and I would like to address some of the many comments and concern that people have.
I'd like to start with climate change and what we can learn from the IPCC reports, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. To make it really clear, since the '80s that carbon emissions are the main driver of climate change and are the biggest risks our civilization is facing right now.
And I would like to follow with some NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
93 numbers about electricity generation. Coal is about 800 grams, 900 grams of carbon Co2 emissions per kilowatt hour. Gas in the best power plants is about 420 grams of Co2 equivalent carbon emissions per kilowatt hour. Solar panels are about 45 grams per kilowatt hour. Wind is about 15 grams per kilowatt hour.
Nuclear is about 12 grams, it's a figure.
There are others, but I'm going to give you the one for France, which has been revised last month. The LTA, so in that figure, the keynote, carbon grams Co2 per kilowatt hour generated in France is under four grams per kilowatt hour for our nuclear power plants.
The reason it is so low is because we have a very advanced special retreatment program. I also want to remind people a little about how the electricity grid works.
Electricity is something that's very difficult to store, and the demand has to be matched in real time with the production. Renewables produce energy only when the weather conditions allow it to do, meaning that at night solar panels are not producing. When there is no wind, they're not producing. And we have to have backup for that.
Today, our backup is not the gas. Today NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
94 in California, almost all the time half of our electricity mix is coming from that gas, gas power plants. Electricity is really quite dependent on decarbonization. So, the more we decarbonize our grid, the more we can invest in electrifying heating in homes, electrifying vehicles, electrifying all activities.
I'd like to also talk about risk versus exposure. A lot of people are concerned about the risks associated with the nuclear, and there is still certainly a lot of risks with nuclear. You never want to spend some time next to some spent fuel for sure.
It's very high-risk.
But risk comes always with exposure, right. For example, we can say that riding my bicycle is way less risky than spending some time next to some spent nuclear fuel. But the thing is, I'm never exposed to spent nuclear fuel.
I fully trust the NRC to do the best job to keep those dangerous materials away from us. All right, and riding a bicycle is actually way more risky than nuclear power generation, right. Because I'm just more exposed to the risk of bicycling.
Also occurring to about risk and nuclear as well, I'd like to remind people of one figure which NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
95 is that a chemical reaction, which is a rearrangement of the electrons between different atoms, is a million times less powerful than the nuclear reaction, which is the rearrangement of the protons and neutrons with an atom. A million times, right.
The energy you get from burning a metric ton of oil is about the same as splitting about three grams of uranium. Three grams is a tenth of an ounce, about a tenth of an ounce. That factor really means that there is less resource to be expected, this energy density means there is less resources to be extracted.
There is less waste. There is less mining. Less of everything. Less materials to be used. Less mining. Less of polluting activities. I also want to remind people that nuclear power plants can absolutely do load-following as France has been doing so in the last 40 years. You're just like, you know, raising it up a little bit to that.
I wish we could give more explanations about radiation a little bit because it feels like people really need to understand the risks here.
Maybe we can compare it with other risk activities with regard to radiation, which are being a flight attendant, for example, or being an astronaut.
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96 I'm over time, so yes. I just want to thank everyone for giving us the opportunity to leave some comments. And I want to remind people that the risk today is Co2 emissions, and that nuclear power plants are fantastic tools to reduce Co2 emissions, and this is the risk we are facing today, climate change, not nuclear waste. I actually want to remind one thing about risk, too. And there is data for that in the latest reports that the European Union worked on, the GRC. In the worst possible actions, nuclear power plants are as risky as dance. If you guys want to closing nuclear power plants, you should also consider closing all hydropower that we have.
Thank you very much. Thank you for listening and have a nice evening.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
I did not realize I did that. For those of you on the phone, apparently I had on multiple microphones at once just in case you wanted to have follow along with the scene.
Next up, we will have Dr. Gene Nelson.
Dr. Gene Nelson.
DR. NELSON: Good evening. My name is Dr.
Gene Nelson. I serve as the legal assistant for the independent non-profit Californians for Green Nuclear NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
97 Power. I have already filed my comments through the regulations.gov website.
So, in summary, I'm objecting as CGNP as objecting to the Diablo Canyon decommissioning plans.
We have some fundamental science to deal with. The sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow hard enough. We have lots of people who apparently don't want to acknowledge those basic laws of physics.
The original NRC legislation includes the evaluation of adverse environmental consequences. If Diablo Canyon is decommissioned, the adverse environmental consequences are offsite. We see the adverse environmental consequences of increased fossil combustion and near collapse of ERCOT. That's the Texas balancing authority on July 13th, 2022.
During over three hours, the statewide locational marginal price hovered near $5,000 per megawatt hour or $5 a kilowatt hour for those of you that are used to kilowatt hours. This is a measure of extreme generation shortage, akin to what happened during Winter Storm Uri.
This shows what happens when we try to build based on inherently unreliable power. I just want to quickly walk through our exhibits, which will NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
98 be uploaded this evening.
The first exhibit is our slides and speaker notes showing how important Diablo Canyon is to California grid reliability. Exhibit 2 is our Capitol Weekly op-ed from April the 5th, 2022, summarizing the state of California plan associated with Diablo Canyon's unnecessarily planned 2025 shutdown.
Which by the way was not an open process.
It was as process developed over six months in secret, mostly with opponents of nuclear power. So, it was hardly an open and transparent process, and that information was revealed during a CPUC meeting by one of the opponents of nuclear power.
Exhibit 3 is the CPUC's June 25th procurement order. We take some excerpts which establish the important reliability role of 5,000 megawatts of unspecified imports and the special confidential treatment for suppliers for unspecified imports.
By the way, unspecified imports are simply translated as out-of-state coal in large part with its adverse environmental consequences.
So, then we have a three-page in Exhibit 4 showing the important role of unspecified imports and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
99 a curious term called shortfall. I translate that for ordinary people as rolling blackouts.
Exhibit 5 is excerpts from the CPUC's February 10th, 2022, preferred system portfolio showing that the arbitrary and unsupportable modeling assumptions that criteria emissions from unspecified imports from 5,000 megawatts of out-of-state mostly coal will be artificially set to zero. Tell that to the people living in the vicinity of those dirty plants. They're some of the dirtiest plants in the country.
Exhibit 6 is the November 2021 Stanford and MIT study showing the benefits of continued safe operation of Diablo Canyon for power reliability, desalinated water supply and emission-free sources of hydrogen for fuel and industrial purposes.
Exhibit 7, a little arcane, is Schedule I from the California independent system operators showing the California Department of Water Resources participating load agreement with FERC dated August 21st, 2021.
The summary is those vital California pumping loads, which almost all Californians depend on, will total in 2021 2,858 megawatts. That exceeds by a great distance Diablo Canyon's 2,256 megawatts.
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100 So much for the myth that Diablo Canyon's power is not needed. It's a myth.
And Exhibit 8 was a July 19th, 2022, EME Wire article. Now EME Wire has customarily opposed nuclear power, but they admit at the end that California's grid reliability will be challenged for five years. Now, that's from an opponent of nuclear power. Our analysis shows it will be imperiled for decades if the plant is unnecessarily shutdown.
So, our summary is the conditions have significantly changed since January 11th, 2018. We request a halt to the decommissioning planning process that's already has imposed a ratepayer burden of almost $0.2 billion.
We've requested all bodies work instead on restarting the licensing renewal application, which did begin in 2009 and was sidelined by state of California actions in 2016.
The result will be significant environmental benefits, a reduction in ratepayer costs and enhance California's public safety stemming from increased California grid reliability. Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
Sarah, can we go to our next virtual speaker, please?
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101 MS. LOPAS: Yes.
Mona Tucker, you should be able to enable your microphone.
Mona Tucker. You just have to unmute yourself, Mona, if you're there. I know you've been waiting for a while.
All right, Brett. Let's wait on Mona.
Let me go to -- see who's next.
Guido, I'm going to move you up. Hang on one second.
All right. Guido, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, you should be able to unmute yourself.
MR. NUNEZ: Thank you very much. My name is Guido Nunez. I'm a Californian not by birth but by choice. I want to ask a few questions to put things in perspective because I think that we're not really looking at the large picture here.
Here, most conversation about whether it's 10 millirems or 25 millirems, and there's a lot of back and forth in between what is safe or not. We're forgetting that in Denver, where I used to live, just because it's higher, the atmosphere is less dense there, I was exposed to at least twice as much radiation. The limit that's being discussed is too high.
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102 I didn't come to California to avoid radiation. I am here because I found a job that I live here 30 years, and to me there seems have been a lot of opportunity. One reason why I moved away from my country, Venezuela, was because life was becoming unbearable. We were living with, my family is still living with rolling blackouts. And that's something very serious. I also hear that people talk about blackouts like nothing. No, it's very serious and people do die when there are blackouts. We need to account for that, too.
It's upsetting for me that we're not really looking the big picture here because I have not the count the times that I've have heard in this meeting that we don't need Diablo power. Okay, if we do not need power from Diablo Canyon, why the state of California open five new natural gas plants last year?
Why? Please tell me why if we don't need Diablo Canyon?
Why, because of the drought. Hydropower was reduced. It couldn't generate as much. Because of climate change, rivers are getting dryer, there's less water. Last year, California increased generation from natural gas almost exactly the same amount as hydropower decreased.
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103 If solar really was covering all this gas, we would not have noticed an increase in the use of natural gas. We wouldn't have had to have new natural gas lines. Not only that, the state of California declared a state of emergency that the government increase the initial limit of existing natural gas plants.
And you know, the people who have their property in San Luis Obispo who will enjoy this clear atmosphere, this clean air that they have because they don't have the kind of natural gas plants that are placed close to people who look like I look. People who mostly speak Spanish.
These are the places that are affected when the state of California has to ramp up burning more natural gas. For the people who have been complaining about, oh, 25 millirem, that's too much.
They are not going to feel the effects of when more natural gas is used.
Please, I do apologize if I sound upset, but I do get upset because we're obsessing about these minute details while ignoring the big reality of climate change. The big reality that even if we could remove all the power, we should remove natural gas.
That's my two cents. Thank you very much.
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104 MS. LOPAS: Thank you for your comments and for participating this evening.
So according to the sign-up list as I have it, we've exhausted our speaker list for those participating in person or in the room with us tonight. Oh, we have an additional person. So, please --
MS. LEWIS: Okay, thank you.
My name is Sherry Lewis (phonetic) from San Luis Obispo. And a very simple thing, I want to talk directly to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
If it turns out that PG&E or some entity does want to prolong the life of Diablo Canyon, make sure they have to apply for a license. Do not grant them an exception. If they want to continue on, they have to reapply. Don't let them get away with not applying. That's it.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you for the comment.
MR. SUBER: This is Gregory Suber. I just wanted to make that clarification that, yes, if PG&E decided that they want to extend the license, they would have to reapply. They would have to submit a license amendment request in addition to an environmental report that the NRC would then generate a safety evaluation and an environmental impact NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
105 statement. So that is the process.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
Sarah, we will now go to our next virtual participant.
MS. LOPAS: Okay. That's Charles Alexander.
You can unmute yourself now, Charles.
Go ahead, Charles. You appear unmuted.
MR. ALEXANDER: Oh, sorry. My headset was still muted even though the Teams wasn't.
In any case, thank you for letting me speak. I appreciate you all coming out and kind of hashing this out with everybody. I guess I'm new to the topic. I've lived in Morro Bay for six years.
I've lived on central coast for ten years.
I didn't actually think about speaking until I heard people speaking on behalf of younger people. And as a younger person, I just wanted to throw in my two cents here. As well as I have a couple questions for the NRC.
So, first question, what is the timeline should Diablo Canyon be recommissioned? What would the timeline look like for it to be up and active and live, generating power again?
You know, PG&E going through the license NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
106 process and then maybe doing the repairs that need to have happen for the underwater intake or whatever those are.
And the second, what is that compared to, say, finding a site and building a new nuclear power plant right in California for it? I think that's a comparison that -- I think it's just valuable information that should be noted at this point.
That's about what I've got. I appreciate you all being here. I'm optimistic that offshore winds might come to our tiny town and help supplement some of the energy crisis that we're facing. I appreciate everybody talking to this point because this is a good spot to get informed on what's going on. Thanks again. That's it.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much for the question and for joining us this evening. I think the NRC has a response.
MR. SUBER: I can handle that.
This is Gregory Suber again. The first thing I'd like to state is that the NRC does not have a licensing action in front of it to relicense Diablo Canyon reactors. So, the first thing I'll say is that right now the NRC does not have any actions before them to take.
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107 And so, I will talk about the relicensing process or license renewal process in a generic term.
Generally, licensees are required to submit a licensed five years before the termination of their current license. And we call that timely renewal.
If a licensee does not submit five years prior to that date, then they're not in a timely renewal and they would have to submit a request to exempt them from timely renewal. And that's the position that Diablo is with that timescale.
Having said that, traditionally it takes between 20 and 24 months for the NRC to conduct a license renewal review. That's the standard timeline, between 20 to 24 months. Since the NRC has previously reviewed the application that Diablo submitted.
That timeline may be expedited if they construct the application using the benefit of the fact that they had previously submitted an application. But in general, it's 20 to 24 months for that review. I don't have the statistics for the new build.
John, do you have any idea how long we've been working Vogtle projects?
MR. MONNINGER: So, the Vogtle project, which is located in the state of Georgia, Vogtle Units NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
108 3 and 4. They're building what's called the AP1000 design, a Westinghouse design. It's been under construction for a good, I would say, ten years. And prior to that was the licensing process.
So, it's a very exhaustive process both rigorously in terms of engineering and analysis to have a site approved for a nuclear power plant, have it designed, approved, have a licensed issued, et cetera. And I would offer that there's good reason in that. Within this country, we want to have safe nuclear power. It wouldn't take more than the 20 to 24 months.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
I think we have one in the room who would like to speak.
MR. NORRIS: Hi, my name is Stan Norris (phonetic). I live up in Sacramento.
At the beginning of the hearing, the NRC showed its successes. Rancho Seco, Humboldt, what about the failures? There was Santa Susana down the road, 1959. Three Mile Island. They say Fukushima wasn't as bad as Three Mile Island, but that's a lie.
Diablo is pretty old. You say there's going to be new technology to take care of the old NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
109 technology. I can't see that happening. I represent two different people on Youtube. One is Dana Durnford. She has a website called the nuclearproctologist.org. And another one is Kevin Branch (phonetic).
They both have been censored heavily.
When they started out, they used to have 20,000 views on each video. Now, they've been censored over the past 12 years down to like maybe 50 views, but they get a lot people because I'm pretty sure Youtube censors them. And these people are all over the world.
There's one person on the site, he lives five miles from Seabrook, and like a week ago, Seabrook had an accident -- not an accident, but they say it was a mistake where they hit the sirens by mistake.
Now when that happens, there's unintended consequences. People are running like crazy. They go out on the freeway. They get into an accident. This should not happen. It doesn't happen with a coal plant.
It doesn't happen with a natural gas plant. So, the technology is there. We can make better coal plants. We can make better gas power NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
110 plants. Nuclear is old technology. That's all I got to say.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
MR. WATSON: Let me just make a couple comments to your comments. The first of all is the one site you mentioned. I think you said Santa Susana (phonetic). That's a DOE site. It was a DOE project to make jet airplanes or rockets with nuclear fuel, and it's been in the news a lot. It's eventually getting cleaned up, but it's not an NRC facility.
It's not an NRC-regulated facility.
Secondly, I agree with you that probably Fukushima was a bigger disaster than Three Mile Island. I also want you to understand that Three Mile Island Unit 2 has a new owner, and they're starting the decommissioning process.
So, the U.S. worst accident has about a 10 to 12 year schedule to begin the cleanup on it. Even the messes we make, we can clean up. It will be done safely. It's one of the projects that NRC-licensed facilities that we oversee.
As I mentioned in the beginning of the talk, we've successfully safely decommissioned about 80 very complex sites including 11 reactors. We think that our program is sufficiently robust to oversee NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
111 these processes and make sure the licensee does meet the criteria to have the license terminated.
Anything else you want to add? No. Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Okay. I think based on looking over one of the shoulders of the computers in here, we have two remaining online speakers. I'd like to go through those first, and then we'll open it back up to those in the room if we have additional people who would like to speak.
Sarah, can we have the next speaker, please.
MS. LOPAS: Yes.
We're going to start with Jennifer Klay.
And then after Jennifer, we have somebody who's on the phone who has the last two digits of 21 in their phone. But let's start with Jennifer Klay.
Jennifer, you should be able to unmute yourself.
MS. KLAY: Okay, can you hear me?
MS. LOPAS: We can.
MS. KLAY: Great.
Thank you for entertaining my comment. My name is Jennifer Klay, and I'm a professor of physics at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and I also live in San NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
112 Luis Obispo, so near Diablo Canyon. I'm a nuclear physicist by training, and I study nuclear collisions at both high and low energy so that we can better understand how the universe works and so we can make nuclear reactors fuel more efficient.
I'm grateful to the NRC for helping to oversee our country's suite of nuclear reactors that provide 50 percent of our clean energy. And I respect the professionalism and dedication of the who ensure that our plants operate safely.
As a scientist, I base my decisions on facts, data and evidence. And in the face of the overwhelming evidence of global climate change and the urgent need for us to achieve net-zero Co2 emissions as quickly as possible, I'm objecting to the decommissioning plans for Diablo Canyon and enthusiastically endorsing keeping it running past its decommissioning target date.
I'd like to just make three quick points.
First, on waste. I am not concerned about accumulating spent nuclear fuel from reactors like many people here have expressed for the simple reason that the dry casks in which they are stored are durable.
There's no mechanism for the fuel inside NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
113 to cause direct harm to life or the environment. They can be managed safely, and they have been for over 50 years.
In contrast, the emissions from fossil fuel plants go directly into our atmosphere and cause death from air pollution to those living nearby and warming that impacts all of us through climate change.
On seismic safety, my second point. The seismic safety of Diablo Canyon has been studied and verified by experts and signed off by the NRC. I would invite skeptics to look at the operational history of nuclear plants in Japan, one of the most seismically active regions of the globe.
Earthquakes there are even more frequent than here in California, and yet none of those plants have experienced catastrophic life-threatening damage from the seismic events. The Fukushima Daiichi incident was caused by the tsunami and engineering failures.
There's no tsunami danger like that here in Diablo Canyon due to its height above sea level.
And the lessons learned from the engineering issues have been taken into account in Diablo Canyon's safety.
My last point is on cost. The NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
114 International Energy Agency and other international agencies have shown that all realistic plans for global decarbonization must include both extending the life of our existing suite of nuclear power plants and rapidly building out new nuclear generation.
In their 2019 report, nuclear power in a clean energy system, the IEA showed that the cheapest path to cleaner energy is lifetime extension of nuclear plants while the most expensive path is building offshore wind.
So instead of using the infrastructure at Diablo Canyon to support expensive, intermittent, environmentally-destructive wind generation when we could continue to generate nearly 10 percent of California's clean power from nuclear energy, I think we should keep Diablo Canyon running.
In closing, I think the biggest risk for nuclear energy is not using it. There is abundant evidence that nuclear energy is the cleanest, safest, cheapest and most reliable replacement for fossil fuels. We need to keep Diablo Canyon running, and I really hope we will. Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
Sarah, whenever you're ready, we --
MS. LOPAS: All right.
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115 MR. KLUKAN: Yes.
MS. LOPAS: Yes, I just enabled the microphone of the last cellphone speaker.
Okay, I am having trouble allowing the microphone of the cellphone speaker. I'm wondering if
-- Marlayna, are you on the phone, too? Are you able to try, too?
Oh, I think I just did it. Okay, great.
You got it, I didn't. All right, thank you.
All right, Cellphone Speaker, you just now need to press Star 6 and make sure that your cellphone isn't muted personally. Like, you don't have the mute setting on your cellphone. All right, you appear to be unmuted.
MS. TUCKER: Good evening, everyone. My name is Mona Olivas Tucker calling from Arroyo Grande in Southern San Luis Obispo County, and I'm the tribal chair for yak tityu tityu yak tilhini, Northern Chumash Tribe of San Luis Obispo County and Region.
We're also referred to ytt. This is the same tribe that my cousin, Scott Lathrop spoke of a while ago.
Diablo lands are almost all pristine lands and a place of immense impact, indigenous cultural resources, cultural landscapes, village sites, and many other incredibly important places that have NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
116 existed for thousands of years. And with either the closing or the continuation of the power plant, all of our cultural places and cultural materials have to be protected.
The majority of our tribal members are the known and documented descendants of the pre-contact villages on the area known as Diablo Lands. These are lands that were taken from us without agreement, consideration or compensation and with either the closing or the continuation of the power plant, the land should rightfully come back to us. Thank you your time this evening.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much, and thank you for participating as well.
I just found out or was notified that we have one additional person in the room who would like to speak, and that is Dan Sea (phonetic). Dan Sea.
MR. SEA: Hello, thank you for your time.
A few things to dispel re: cognitive dissonance.
The IPCC shows two to five times expansion nuclear in all of its decarbonization modeling scenarios. The IPCC, NREL, National Renewable Energy Lab, and the UNECE all show nuclear as amongst as or as the lowest life cycle emission of all energy sources. This is all off the top of my head. I'm not NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
117 prepared for this.
So, the cognitive dissonance. It's shown to be, it's proven to be low life cycle emissions.
California is burning -- 50 percent of electrical energy in the state is coming from natural gas. So, square that with whatever your feelings are about energy. These are the real numbers.
Look at what's happening in Germany right now. They have a geopolitical crisis because of the war in Ukraine. Their gas supply, which they're leaning heavily on as they phase out nuclear, is now being threatened and they're having to go back to coal, the dirtiest of all energy sources.
So, when we talk about cognitive dissonance, that is cognitive dissonance. It is not about emotion and fear of something you don't understand. We need to drop that and lean on science, lean on real science, real numbers and stop this insane emotionally-driven fear mongering.
Diablo is a safe, highly-analyzed facility. It's probably one of the most analyzed structures in the entire world. It's been analyzed over and over again and shown to be safe. The best thing we can do is keep it open as long as possible.
We have droughts, we have record heat.
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118 Diablo is the most stable, reliable power source we have. We need it as long as possible. So, 20-year extension would be the best thing. If it happens to be less than that, it's still a positive, but ending it in five years or less is one of the worst things we could possibly do.
Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
I think we had -- I see one other person.
Oh, there you go.
Sarah, we're going to go with one other person in the room. Please let me know if anyone raises their hand after this speaker goes.
MS. LOPAS: Will do.
MR. WALA: My name is Joei Wala (phonetic). I'm a retired PG&E Diablo person. You know, nuclear power puts out 50 percent of the clean power in our country. Safe, clean power 24/7.
There's no downtime with no wind, no sun. We have to be real. Come on, folks. I know some of you folks believe all the stuff that you see. Be truthful to this time. Study the science.
Nuclear power is safe, it's needed. And it's just begun. It's a new era. It's not old technology. It's going to improve. I mean, it could NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
119 be out -- it can be still. It can make clean hydrogen.
The bad guy in the room is fossil fuel.
Fossil fuel is killing, I think, 7 million people a year around the world. It's a lot of folks. Nuclear is the safest. You should go by per megahour, you know what I mean.
Anyway, I just can't believe that we'd close this wonderful plant. It's probably one of the best plants in the world. Please don't close it. We thank NRC and all the people who work out there at PG&E. Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
Sarah, do we have any speakers online?
MS. LOPAS: I'm seeing no other raised hands.
MR. KLUKAN: Okay. Is there anyone who has not yet spoken who would like to speak at this time?
All right, then --
MS. LOPAS: I just got a raised hand. I'm sorry, Brett. I just got a raised hand.
MR. KLUKAN: Okay, we'll go to you then, Sarah.
MS. LOPAS: Yes.
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120 Brendan, I'm going to -- give me a second, Brendan.
All right, Brendan. You should be able to unmute yourself.
Are you there, Brendan? You just have to hit unmute on your computer.
MR. PITTMAN: Hello, can you hear me?
MS. LOPAS: Yes, there you are.
MR. PITTMAN: All right. Techno glitch there. My apologies for the wait.
Hi, my name is Brendan Pittman. I live in Berkeley, California. I'm a civil engineer. I practiced transportation engineering in the Bay Area.
I'd just like to thank the NRC for their time tonight and just thank all the other speakers for their words.
I'm just calling in because I want to put my two cents in the ring in support of the relicensure, the eventual relicensure of Diablo Canyon. We all know it's coming. I think we should do everything in our power to make sure that we are prepared for when that license is submitted by PG&E in the state of California.
And I say the state of California because I think the entire state of California is going to get behind this. We have leadership in the government NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
121 that is getting behind it right now. They may not want to talk about it publicly, but they are behind it right now.
Yes, I would just like to also say that Diablo Canyon is the pride of the Pacific suite of power generators along with Columbia and Palo Verde.
They represent reliable, stable power to our grid that we just cannot afford to close these plants down right now.
We are just being squeezed on electricity and energy right now in the state of California. We have lower energy reserves in our otherwise stable hydroelectric facilities. And as many of the other speakers have said, we are heavily relying on more and more gas resources. And that's the opposite way we want to go.
I'd just like to say from a resident in a city that is historically anti-nuclear that there's a voice in this city and there's a lot of young voices that I talked to on the streets of San Francisco Valencia Street and in Berkeley in downtown farmers' markets that are in support of Diablo Canyon. They just don't know it until you start talking to them.
Thank you for your time and I really look forward to more progress coming out of this committee NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
122 and commission and the NRC for the future of Diablo Canyon. Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. Again, I'm going back to the room. Is there anyone else who has not yet spoken who would like to speak this evening?
Okay. Sarah, do you have any additional hands or people who have not yet spoken?
MS. LOPAS: I do not have any right now.
MR. KLUKAN: Okay. We're going to go then, since we have some remaining time. It looks like Mr. Severance that you wanted to make some additional comments?
MR. SEVERANCE: Thank you for just a recap or response to some of the other comments.
First of all, I completely agree that we need science-based solutions in climate change and fossil fuels are the real source of the crisis here.
I'm not an absolutist about being anti-nuclear, per se. It's about avoiding the reinvestment in the power plant that would keep it running for another 40 years in order to amortize that cost without having sunk cost.
I think we need to be careful using the plant as a transition to offshore wind. I kind of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
123 take exception to renewables being referred to inherently unreliable.
The study that was done at Cal Poly in the last few years looking offshore wind potential in California found that there's highly reliable winds that are 45 miles offshore, and the bell curve of that production is exactly the opposite from solar production.
So, we're seeing higher production at night with offshore wind in California then we do and that it exactly balances solar on the grid. So, it's really in the shoulder periods during the day that we would need a lot of storage.
I do believe that hydrogen is providing a solution there that's more viable in the long-term with economies that scale than lithium ion batteries, which have their own impact.
I just ask that we not look at renewables as inherently unreliable, but looking at grid harmonization strategies including how we electrify, how we manage HVAC loads for example. There's ways to cut, as one of my specialties, capacity in residential application to a third of what they currently are by doing relatively inexpensive energy upgrades on homes.
That's what driving peak loads on the grid.
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124 We really need to be looking at holistic solutions and where the cost tradeoffs make the most sense and avoiding stranded assets as far as those having long-term negative economic impacts.
One other thing I just have to mention is low temperature geothermal has enormous capacity to provide baseload and there's new technologies emerging in that. It's much more distributed in terms of potential sites. The DOE should definitely be looking at things like that. PG&E and things should be looking at things like that.
I think the point is that business has to make economic decisions. I think if PG&E were to stand back and look at all alternatives, they would probably see that keeping the plant open for another five or ten years until offshore wind becomes economically viable and permitted given the permit terms and stuff that that would probably make some sense to them.
And they would see that other alternatives are emerging that would benefit them and we should be looking at scenarios where if a plant is kept open, we're accelerating, we're hitting the accelerator on other technologies that would fill in where the plant is currently providing that baseload. Thank you for NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
125 the opportunity to just wind up comments.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
Sarah, do we have any additional speakers online?
MS. LOPAS: We have Louis Opter making an additional comment.
Louis, let me go ahead and make you so you can enable your microphone. Go ahead.
MR. OPTER: Thank you very much.
Yes, I meant to say you had already mention that as much as I'm for nuclear and not so very much for renewables and we should invest in both as much as possible. Yes, that kind of was what I wanted to say.
I don't think anyone is looking for a 100 percent nuclear production method. We definitely need to invest in renewables both at the same time. I also say that renewables and nuclear share the same cost structures. It's all about capital expenditures and your cost of capital.
They both take a long time to do wind.
Offshore wind can take a long time to set up. Nuclear takes a long time to set up. We need to do both.
Everything we need to invest like nuclear is that it a proven technology. It works. We know how to do it.
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126 I'm a little bit skeptical on hydrogen.
It's a very, very small molecule. It's very hard to contain. There's a lot of risks. I think that's why it has taken off so far. I would like to exercise caution because I know a lot of people are very, very against at that idea. That's it. Let's go for it (audio interference). Thank you so much.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you again. Looking at the -- one day I'll figure this out. No worries.
It's 8:54 right now. We have one additional speaker in the room who would like to offer some additional comments. Then, I'm going to, just so we have some time remaining before 9:00, I'm going to turn it back over to Bruce to give you some time to recap and to close us out.
This will be our last speaker for this evening before I turn it over to Bruce. Thank you.
DR. NELSON: Again, this is Dr. Gene Nelson with Californians for Green Nuclear Power.
I want to revisit what I call Exhibit 7.
That is the massive amounts of power that are required in this drought, parched state to pump water from one end to the other. That is the responsibility in large part of the California Department of Water Resources.
And their load in -- actually, it was 2020, was 2,858 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
127 megawatts.
I want to sort of help people to understand how massive that is. There was an account of a public radio announcer going to one of these facilities at the base of the Tehachapi Mountains, and they started it up. And she said it felt like an earthquake.
The whole building shook because that's the kind of power you need to move these massive amounts of water that we need to keep this state alive. Diablo Canyon can provide that power if it is allowed to continue to operate. The plant is now will be -- in 2025, it will be fully, and I want to underscore this, its cost will be fully paid for by the California ratepayer.
So essentially as we continue to use this plant, it becomes almost free. So, this is an incredible asset. We need to keep it running. Thank you for this extra time.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you again for participating. Just a quick comment from me before I turn it over to Bruce. Thank you all for being civil with each other and for being patient as we've gone through the speakers. I really appreciate it. We have clearly encountered some snafus in terms of the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
128 technology.
Again, as I mentioned earlier, we're trying to learn to become better to better serve you in these hybrid environments which is part of what will be the future going forward, these type of hybrid meetings. So, if you can think of ways for us to do this better, because I recognize that this clearly probably isn't the best way of doing it, but we have to figure out how to improve it.
So please help us. Even just to tell me where I should look when people are speaking online because I feel like I either look up at the ceiling or down at the floor and there's different connotations.
So anyway, it's just a bad joke. With that, thank you again. Please go to the NRC website to fill out the feedback form. With that, I'll turn it over to Bruce.
MR. WATSON: Yes. First of all, I'd like to thank everybody for coming out. I wanted to mention that we've had almost 100 participants between the in-person and the virtual meeting. Obviously, we had some issues with the IT system, so we'll apologize for that. But at least we overcame quite a bit of that so we could get comments.
I just wanted to summarize a couple things NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
129 that I made noteworthy to myself from the group comments tonight. The Diablo Canyon Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel has a report. I've read it.
It provides a very good historical perspective of the actions they've taken, and it also identifies the number -- I think five issues that they had pertaining principally to the renewal process including the deferred maintenance, repurposing of the lands, and I think one of the other items that came out from other people is there's some concerns about seismic issues with regards to the safety of the plant.
I was very happy to hear that the acknowledgment, I guess, by the ytt of the Northern Chumash. They are working with PG&E and on the sensitive cultural issues and places that are around the site. So, I was encouraged by that.
I heard concerns about the 25 millirem per year limit for the standard that we use for decommissioning. As I mentioned before, it can be lowered if that's what the utility or licensee want to do. But to date all the power plants that have been decommissioned have been a small fraction of that limit.
I also heard a lot of concerns about the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
130 need for a permanent repository for the high-level waste and spent fuel. The only thing I can comment about that is it has to be done by the Congress to get that done. NRC was in the process of licensing a facility at one point.
I also heard a couple times an issue about the DOE should take a look at developing a more national plan for grid stability. Let's see here. I heard a lot of comments pro and con about the plant continuing to operate, and I'll just leave it at that because that will be a subject of another public meeting that my colleagues will be holding in the future. So, with that, I'd like to adjourn the meeting. Again, I'd like to -- and so I would like to thank everybody for coming out tonight. It says 9:00 on the nose up there, so we're done. Thank you.
(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record at 9:00 p.m.)
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
131 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com