NRC puts license extension for Turkey Point on hold, calls for new environmental review
In an unusual move, the federal government effectively reversed its decision to allow the Turkey Point nuclear power plant to continue running until mid-century, ordering a new review of potential environmental risks associated with its operation along southern Biscayne Bay.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s order, issued Monday, is a flip-flop of a 2019 decision by the previous commission to extend Florida Power & Light’s operating license for the two reactors to an unprecedented 80 years — until 2052 for one and 2053 for the other. In doing so, the agency —which oversees the nation’s network of nuclear power plants — had accepted an earlier and older environmental impact statement FPL had submitted when it was granted a previous 20-year extension.
The new decision will have no immediate impact on the operation of a sprawling bayside facility that supplies much of South Florida with electricity. FPL’s previous 20-year extension runs until 2032 and 2033 for the respective reactors.
But it does give environmentalists, who filed legal challenges of the 2019 decision, another shot at re-upping their concerns that federal regulators didn’t adequately consider the risks of climate change and sea level rise-driven flooding when granting the last extension.
“We’ve spent years working on this issue and we’re absolutely thrilled that the NRC has decided to require updating the environmental assessments for operating extensions. This is a victory for resiliency, for science, for safety and for the environment,” said Rachel Silverstein, head of Miami Waterkeeper, one of the organizations that legally challenged the license extension.
In a document outlining the next steps, the commission wrote that “The NRC will issue a hearing opportunity after the staff completes a new site-specific environmental impact statement.”
An agency spokesperson told the Miami Herald that after a utility submits its own environmental impact statement, the NRC technical staff uses that to do its own examination and write a draft environmental impact statement. The public will then get a chance to comment on that draft before the NRC finalizes the statement and decides on the license extension request.
The NRC ordered its staff to change the expiration of the operating license back to 2032 and 2033 and also asked FPL to submit its opinion on the “practical effects” of the decision by March 31.
Bill Orlove, a spokesperson for FPL, which has long defended the safety of reactors that first went online in the 1970s and has argued that rising sea levels and other climate factors won’t compromise its operation, said the utility was aware of the order.
“The NRC’s decisions do not affect FPL’s current authority to safely and reliably operate the Turkey Point units,” he wrote in a statement. “The decisions affect the NRC’s environmental review for plant operations in the future, starting in 2032. We are evaluating the NRC’s decisions to determine our next steps in the license renewal process.
The utility also has permission to build another two nuclear reactors at Turkey Point but later shelved those plans indefinitely.
The Turkey Point decision, while unusual, wasn’t the only reversal from the agency. The commission’s decision also undoes a license extension for the Peach Bottom nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, part of a trend of the new President Joe Biden-appointed commission revisiting decisions made by the previous President Donald Trump-appointed commission.
Edwin Lyman, the senior global security scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the order a “very important development.”
“For something as important as this, extending these licenses for another 20-year period, it makes sense to take a fresh look at all these issues and not use a tunnel vision,” he said. “They need to consider the whole picture, especially in light of new developments around climate change and anything else that would be pertinent.”
This story was originally published February 24, 2022 at 2:49 PM.
