The cooling towers at Rancho Seco were demolished years ago, but the land they stood on in Sacramento County, California, never fully left the energy business. Spent nuclear fuel still sits in sealed dry casks under federal watch. Now the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, the public utility that owns the property, plans to fill a neighboring parcel with roughly 100 battery energy storage system (BESS) units, a project called Dry Creek Energy Storage that would rank among the larger grid batteries in the state.
If completed as proposed, the installation would transform a site defined by a 1989 reactor shutdown and decades of decommissioning into an active node on California’s electricity grid, storing power generated by solar and wind farms and dispatching it when demand spikes or generation drops. The project sits at the intersection of two regulatory worlds: California’s aggressive push to add grid-scale storage and the federal government’s open-ended obligation to monitor spent nuclear fuel that has nowhere else to go.
What the regulatory record confirms
California’s state clearinghouse lists Dry Creek Energy Storage under tracking number SCH 2017092042. A Notice of Determination filed under the California Environmental Quality Act describes the physical scope: grading, approximately 100 BESS units, trenching and electrical collection lines, and perimeter fencing. The filing notes that an Environmental Impact Report and a subsequent addendum were prepared before the determination was posted. The project also holds California Department of Fish and Wildlife Incidental Take Permit No. 2081-2025-043-02, issued because construction is expected to affect habitat used by state-listed species.
That habitat impact is quantified in the permit record. The Notice of Determination documents permanent losses to upland dispersal and foraging habitat on the project footprint. In practical terms, the battery installation will replace open ground that wildlife currently uses for movement and feeding. California’s endangered species process is designed to offset that cost through conditions such as habitat preservation or compensatory mitigation on other land…