NRC ISSUES SAFETY EVALUATION REPORT FOR DIABLO CANYON 

NUCLEAR POWER PLANT LICENSE RENEWAL APPLICATION 

 

 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has issued its Safety Evaluation Report (SER) 

with open items for the proposed renewal of the operating licenses for Diablo Canyon Nuclear 

Power Plant, Units 1 and 2. 

 Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) submitted an application to the NRC in 

November 2009, to extend the plant licenses by 20 years for each unit. The plant, operated by 

PG&E, is located in Avila Beach, Calif. The current 40-year operating licenses for DCPP, Units 

1 and 2 are due to expire on November 2, 2024, and August 26, 2025, respectively. 

 The SER documents the results of the NRC staff’s review of the license renewal 

application and site audit of Diablo Canyon’s aging management programs to address the safety 

of plant operations during the period of extended operation. 

 In a letter dated January 10, 2011, Brian Holian, director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor 

Regulation’s Division of License Renewal, provided PG&E with the SER and requested 

responses to the open items by Feb. 9, 2011. The SER is available on the NRC’s website at 

http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal/applications/diablo-canyon.html. 

Issuance of an SER with open items is a typical milestone in a license renewal review. The SER 

identifies open items that still need to be addressed by the applicant before the staff can complete 

its review. The open items in this SER are related to which components require aging 

management reviews, aging management programs and time-limited aging analyses. 

After PG&E provides satisfactory information to address the open items, the NRC staff 

will present its final conclusions on the license renewal application in an update to the SER. The 

final SER is estimated to be issued in May 2011. 

 The SER and the license renewal application have also been provided to the NRC’s 

Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS), an independent body of experts that 

advises the NRC on reactor safety matters. An ACRS subcommittee is expected to discuss the 

SER with open items during a meeting in February. The meeting, which will take place at NRC 

Headquarters in Rockville, Md., will be open to the public and will be announced on the 

agency’s website at http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/public-meetings/index.cfm. The full 

ACRS will issue a report later discussing the results of its review. 

NRC NEWS

U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 

Washington, D.C. 20555-0001 

E-mail: opa.resource@nrc.gov

Site: http://www.nrc.gov

No. 11-006 January 11, 2011 
 A copy of the letter and the SER with open items will be available in the NRC’s 

Agencywide Documents Access and Management Systems (ADAMS) under accession number 

ML110100796. ADAMS is accessible via the agency’s website at: 

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. Help in using ADAMS is available by contacting 

the NRC’s Public Document Room at 1-800-397-4209 or 301-415-4737, or by e-mail at 

pdr.resource@nrc.gov. 

 Additional information concerning license renewal in general and the Diablo Canyon 

application in particular can be found at http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal.html. 

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