If a California nuclear power plant is allowed to shut down as scheduled it will “inflict grave harm” on the state’s economy and environment, leaders of a prominent nuclear professional association said in a statement last week.
“Years ago, California made a decision to shut down the Diablo Canyon [Power Plant] units. However, circumstances have changed,” American Nuclear Society (ANS) president Steven Nesbit and CEO Craig Piercy said in the Nov. 24 statement. “The clean energy imperative is even stronger, and the importance of Diablo Canyon to the reliability of California’s current and future supply of carbon-free electricity is undeniable.”
Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), the plant’s operator, plans to shut down its Unit 1 reactor in 2024. Unit 2 is scheduled to go dark the following year.
Nesbit and Piercy argued that if PG&E goes through with the shutdown they will “deprive California of its largest carbon-free energy resource and worsen the state’s growing dependency on electricity from out-of-state fossil power plants.” The loss of generating capacity from Diablo Canyon would also worsen rolling blackouts across the Golden State stemming from power supply shortages, they said.
“It is time to revisit outdated decisions made in the last decade in the light of today’s facts and prepare for the continued operation of Diablo Canyon,” Nesbit and Piercy said.
Industry’s bid to keep Diablo Canyon humming was backed up Nov. 8 by a university report which concluded that allowing the plant to run through 2045 could save California around $21 billion in operating costs and significantly cut carbon emissions. The joint Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and LucidCatalyst research team suggested that Diablo Canyon be used as a “polygeneration facility” for generating electricity, desalinated water and clean hydrogen.
Meanwhile, PG&E is putting together a decommissioning plan for the San Luis Obispo County, Calif., nuclear plant. An executive said Nov.1 that the company would make “several major announcements” about the project by early January.
Diablo Canyon is California’s last operating nuclear power plant. The state’s other three former plants, San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), Humboldt Bay and Rancho Seco, are all either in the midst of decommissioning or already dismantled.
Updated 11/29/2021 10:34 a.m. to reflect that ANS is a professional association.
