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Humboldt Bay

1.0 Site Identification

2.0 Site Status Summary

The Humboldt Bay plant was shutdown in July 1976, and has been in SAFSTOR until recently, consistent with the decommissioning plan approved in July 1988. Subsequent to the 1996 decommissioning rule, however, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the licensee, converted the decommissioning plan into its Defueling Safety Analysis Report, which is now updated every 2 years. The licensee also issued a post-shutdown decommissioning activities report (PSDAR) in February 1998, and the plant has begun incremental decommissioning activities. In addition, the licensee submitted an independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI) application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in December 2003. Based on that application, Humboldt Bay will have a unique ISFSI dry cask storage because of the short length of its fuel assemblies. Moreover, the casks will be stored below-grade to accommodate regional seismicity issues, security concerns, and site boundary dose limits. The NRC issued the requested license on November 18, 2005, and the licensee began constructing the ISFSI in 2007 and started loading fuel into the ISFSI in 2008. Following ISFSI loading, the licensee will be constructing two new fossil units in 2008 and 2009 to replace the old Humboldt Bay Units 1 and 2. Following construction of the new units, the old fossil Units 1 and 2 will be decommissioned in 2009 and 2010. During this period, only incremental decommissioning of Unit 3 will take place. As the decommissioning of the fossil units is completed, full decommissioning of Unit 3 will begin. The licensee will probably submit its License Termination Plan (LTP) in 2010 or 2011, with license termination to be completed in 2012 or 2013.

Humboldt Bay, Units 1 and 2 are fossil plants, located immediately adjacent to Unit 3, which are still in commercial operation. During the fall of 2003, the licensee began a detailed examination of the contents of its spent fuel pool in preparation for eventual removal of the fuel assemblies stored in the pool to a dry cask storage ISFSI. In the process of examining the spent fuel pool, the licensee discovered fuel rod fragments that could not be accounted for by records maintained at the facility. While reviewing the records related to the fragment investigation, the licensee identified a discrepancy that called into question the location of three segments of a portion of a single spent fuel rod removed from an assembly (designated A-49) in 1968. Records from 1968 indicate that a single fuel rod from assembly A-49 was cut into three 18-inch segments that were placed in a small container with an intention to ship them to an off-site lab for analysis. The records indicate that the offsite shipment never occurred, and the three 18-inch segments in their special storage container were placed somewhere in the spent fuel pool without identifying the specific location. The licensee has been unable to locate these three 18-inch rod segments in the spent fuel pool, and has not found any records documenting their shipment offsite. On June 20–24, 2005, a team of inspectors from NRC Headquarters and Region IV conducted the final onsite portion of the special inspection to review the licensee's efforts and details of the Project Final Report. The inspectors concluded that the special nuclear material (SNM) Control and Accountability Project was generally complete and thorough in its search for the missing fuel segments. The licensee concluded that the most likely location of the missing fuel segments was in the spent fuel pool, in an altered configuration, while the NRC concluded that the most likely location was at a low-level radioactive waste disposal site.

Humboldt Bay, Unit 3 is a 65 Megawatt-electric (MWe) boiling-water reactor (BWR) plant located 4 miles southwest of Eureka, California. The plant operated commercially from 1963 through 1976, when it shutdown for seismic modifications. In 1983, with the plant still shutdown, PG&E determined that required seismic modifications, and the requirements imposed as a result of the accident at Three Mile Island, Unit 2 (TMI-2), made continued operations no longer economically feasible and, therefore, decided to decommission the plant. All fuel was placed in the spent fuel pool, and the NRC issued a possession-only license amendment in 1985. The plant is currently in a SAFSTOR status.

3.0 Major Technical or Regulatory Issues

The licensee is currently in the process of planning for the construction of two new fossil generating units on the site, and has performed radiological surveys of the area for the new plants. The NRC, with staff from Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE), performed confirmatory surveys prior to construction.

4.0 Estimated Date For Closure

12/31/2013

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Friday, November 13, 2009