PG&E completes decommissioning process, ends nuclear facility license

Following a years-long effort to decommission the former nuclear power plant in Humboldt Bay, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. recently filed a request with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to terminate the power plant’s license marking a “major milestone” for the Humboldt County community.

“The PG&E team dedicated countless hours to this safe and successful decommissioning,” Jim Welsch, a senior vice president and the generation and chief nuclear officer said in a prepared statement. “We appreciate the decades-long partnership with the Humboldt community, and especially the contribution of the HBPP Community Advisory Board. We are all enormously proud to reach this milestone.”

Decomissioning

Decommissioning efforts for the Humboldt Bay Power Plant Unit 3, a 63-Megawatt electric boiling water reactor, began in June 2009, more than 30 years after the power plant had ceased operations. It operated from 1963 to 1976 and was permanently defueled in 1984.

At the time of the power plant’s construction, atomic energy was hailed as the solution to global energy needs. Cost-efficient construction methods and innovative engineering made the power plant “the first economically viable, privately funded nuclear power plant in the world,” according to documentation from the Library of Congress. “Its pressure suppression system became the preferred design for boiling water power plants. Soon nuclear power became an important source of energy in the United States and the world.”

Why was the power plant short-lived? As it turns out, seismically active regions are not ideal locations for nuclear power.

“Unit 3 was shut down in 1976 for refueling and seismic upgrades. Repairs subsequently extended the planned shutdown period, and in that interval, significant regulatory changes were made for reactor operation and design,” said PG&E spokesperson Carina Corral. “The decision was made to forego further modifications and to not restart Unit 3.”

Jennifer Kalt, Humboldt Baykeeper director and decommissioning community advisory board member, said there were fault lines discovered near the plant after it had been built.

“I don’t think people realized the earthquake faults nearby when it was built. I’ve seen one of the maps that shows where the Little Salmon Fault goes right to the power plant,” she said. “I’m not a geologist but geologists have told me it’s the most active local fault. There’s another one called Discharge Canal Fault that was also discovered after they built the plant.”

During the decommissioning process, Kalt said the community advisory board pushed PG&E to conduct a more thorough clean up of the site than what was required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“They were just going to require the top three feet of soil be remediated,” she said. “The reactor was built underground, it was buried in a 75-foot deep hole. The board insisted that PG&E remove it and they did. They’ve cleaned up the site which is a huge relief. The cost — the last I heard — since 2008 was over $1.2 billion to decommission the plant.”

Matthew Marshall, executive director of the Redwood Coast Energy Authority, has served on the plant’s community advisory board since 2010.

“I’ve been consistently impressed with the level of professionalism and diligence of the PG&E team responsible for the site decontamination,” he said. “They were always transparent about the process and the challenges they were working through, and I believe their efforts to incorporate the community’s desired outcome from their work is reflected in an exemplary level of clean-up and final site remediation.”

At this point, the site has been remediated to levels “meeting an extensive set of standards and release criteria for a post-industrial, ‘residential farming’ use,” according to PG&E. “The ‘resident farmer’ scenario is the most restrictive level for remediation in (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) guidance for decommissioning former nuclear reactor sites.”

However, the work is not over.

More to be done

Buried deep into Buhne Point, a highland bluff directly northeast of King Salmon, is an underground nuclear waste storage facility known as the Humboldt Bay Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation, or ISFSI. While the ISFSI will effectively contain the 37-tons of nuclear waste for approximately 50 years, it is not a permanent solution.

“All of the high-level waste that was ever produced at the power plant including all the spent fuel rods the reactor cut up into pieces, all that stuff is buried on top of the hill at King Salmon,” Kalt said. “The ISFSI is really what the Baykeeper is concerned about at this point.”

Corral said the “five casks of spent nuclear fuel and one cask of Greater than Class C waste” will remain on site until an offsite repository is available, “as promised by the federal government.”

However, Kalt said the waste will never be removed “because nobody wants it.”

“I really just don’t think it’s appropriate anyway. It would be so dangerous to move it and it would be unfair to put that on another community,” she said.”There is no such thing as ‘away’. If you’re going to have something that toxic in your community, you should understand that this is in perpetuity.”

The ISFSI will have to be relocated at some point as the bluff continues to erode and the sea level continues to rise.

“The projections indicate that the sea level will be four feet higher in 50 years than it is today,” Kalt said. “The ISFSI is on the top of an eroding bluff, it’s 44-feet above sea level, it’s buried to 30 feet below the surface, so the bottom is only 10 feet above sea level currently. …What are we going to do, you know? It’s pretty clear that there needs to be a plan to at least move it back from the bay, it’s going to be really expensive and controversial, but leaving it there is not a plan. It’s a nightmare.”

It won’t be easy, but Kalt said there needs to be a community process in deciding where to relocate the ISFSI.

“It is essential for the community advisory board to continue meeting but we also want the community involved and not just experts researching it,” she said. “Nobody is going to want it where they are, of course, but what considerations should we take into account? Obviously, not near an earthquake fault, not near a water body, not near people. I could just tick off all these things but what does that leave us with? Somewhere on industrial timberlands inland from the site now? It would almost surely have to be private property because no one would want it on public property.”

Marshall also underscored the need to develop a plan to relocate the spent fuel casts.

“There will be an ongoing need to address the safe, long-term management of this radioactive waste, and there is currently no viable alternative/permanent storage location,” he said. “But it is great to have the plant decommissioning and site cleanup safely and thoroughly completed after so many years of complex work.”

When asked what happens next, Corral said, “PG&E does not currently have plans beyond industrial use for the site as the ISFSI and the Humboldt Bay Generating Station are located within the former (power plant) site boundary.”

Isabella Vanderheiden can be reached at 707-441-0504.