Saying the matter was "unnecessary and premature," the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday denied a San Luis Obispo environmental group’s request to invalidate PG&E’s license to store spent fuel at Diablo Canyon.

Lawyers for anti-nuclear group Mothers for Peace filed the motion to stop the utility from loading spent fuel pending the outcome of an Environmental Impact Review to study ecological impacts from a potential terrorist attack.

Commissioners denied the motion, they wrote, because any potential work at the site is more than a year away.

"We see no urgent reason to consider now the validity of PG&E’s ISFSI license and PG&E’s right to load spent fuel into its ISFSI," they wrote in a memorandum of their decision. "Neither issue has practical significance until late in 2007 at the earliest."

PG&E officials said last month they planned to appeal to the Supreme Court a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that requires federal regulators to analyze the effects of a terrorist attack on an above-ground, radioactive-waste-storage facility now under construction at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.

Group members had argued that PG&E’s dry-cask storage for highly radioactive spent reactor fuel needs more scrutiny because it could be vulnerable to terrorists. Those casks, made out of concrete and steel, would be mounted above ground on a hillside behind the power plant.

-- Stephen Curran scurran@thetribunenews.com