Keeping California’s last nuclear power plant online would be “an outrage and a betrayal,” a coalition of anti-nuclear groups told the state governor in a letter last week, as the Golden State pondered whether to press for a federal bailout for the facility.
Keeping Diablo Canyon Power Plant online past its scheduled 2025 shutdown date “would produce hundreds of tons more high level radioactive waste, dangerous for half a million years, and for which there is still no safe place to store it long term,” the group of 67 environmental groups headed by San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace told Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in a letter dated May 17. “Continued operation adds additional risk and cost,” the letter said.
Newsom has said that he would consider pressuring Diablo Canyon operator Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) to apply for a bailout with the Department of Energy as part of its roughly $6 billion civil nuclear credits program, greenlit in November as part of the White House’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Sacramento, however, has not said whether it would actually take such action.
A spokesperson for PG&E told Exchange Monitor via email Tuesday that the utility is “still assessing whether and how Diablo Canyon fits into the funding opportunity” should California decide it wants to keep the plant online “as an option for continued generation of clean baseload energy.”
The anti-nukers raised concerns in their letter about the San Luis Obispo, Calif., plant’s resilience against earthquakes and flooding. “Diablo Canyon, right on the coast, is uniquely vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis, making it one of the most dangerous nuclear plants in the country,” they said. “If there is a major accident, the cost could make a few billion dollars trivial.”
“Diablo means ‘devil’ in Spanish, and the name is fitting,” the anti-nukers said.
Diablo Canyon’s fate has been the subject of some push and pull from stakeholders in recent weeks. A cadre of experts led by former Secretary of Energy Steven Chu in February urged Newsom to walk back the plant’s shutdown, calling it “incompatible” with California’s clean energy goals.
The letter cited a November report from Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which found that keeping the plant online through 2045 could save the Golden State around $21 million in power system costs.
Meanwhile, PG&E is moving ahead with its decommissioning plans. The utility in April announced that it selected Orano USA to handle spent fuel management at Diablo Canyon once the plant goes dark. PG&E has said that the site’s two reactors should go offline in 2024 and 2025, respectively.
Diablo Canyon is California’s last operating nuclear plant. The state’s former San Onofre, Rancho Seco, and Humboldt Bay plants are all either decommissioned or currently being dismantled.
Updated: 05/24/2022 at 9:16 p.m. Eastern time with comment from PG&E.
