JULY 24, 2014

Last week the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility (A4NR) met with CPUC Commission staff to challenge a Proposed Decision that would undermine over 30 years of precedent-setting California law.  The Alliance recommended that additional ratepayer money to pay for the building of new pads to store spent fuel at Diablo Canyon should be conditioned with expedited transfer of waste assemblies from the liquid pools to the dry cask.  Overshadowed in a 740 page decision, the CPUC Judge had agreed with PG&E that California was preempted from directing the utility's actions on any nuclear issue:

"We decline to impose the condition proposed by A4NR to use the GRC process to condition rate recovery for nuclear operations as a means of indirectly compelling PG&E to take actions regarding the transfer of spent fuel to dry cask storage that we do not have legal authority to directly order."

Fortunately our attorney caught PG&E's misleading language, as he was the Executive Director of the California Energy Commission at the time the agency brought the original lawsuit in which the Supreme Court unanimously held:

"[t]he Federal Government maintains complete control of the safety and "nuclear" aspects of energy generation; the States exercise their traditional authority over the need for additional generating capacity, the type of generating facilities to be licensed, land use, ratemaking, and the like.   The above is not particularly controversial. [emphasis added]"

PACIFIC GAS & ELEC. v. ENERGY RESOURCES COMM'N, 461 U.S. 190 (1983)

So again we thank our supporters for making our work possible and allowing us to carefully read all nuclear decisions and challenge PG&E and any state agency that attempts to undermine California's nuclear safety laws.  Your continued support will ensure that PG&E understands that it is not in its best interest or the interest of its ratepayers to attempt to relicense its aging reactors at Diablo Canyon.

In Peace,
Rochelle Becker

[address removed]

www.a4nr.org