The recent effort to keep California’s last operating nuclear power plant online enjoys bipartisan support among voters in the Golden State, according to a university poll published last week.
Among registered voters in California, 56% said that they support keeping Diablo Canyon Power Plant online five years past its scheduled 2025 shutdown date, according to polling data published Oct. 7 by the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. 19% of registered voters oppose such an extension, and 25% are undecided or have no opinion, the study said.
Until recently, operator Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) planned to take the San Luis Obispo, Calif., Diablo Canyon plant’s two reactors offline in 2024 and 2025, respectively. The utility has since bid on a Department of Energy bailout for the facility.
As to the partisan splits, about seven in 10 California Republican voters support a Diablo Canyon life extension, the Berkeley institute reported. Support for the plan “also includes pluralities of Democrats and liberals, although by somewhat smaller margins and with more undecided,” the study said.
According to the data, around 46% of registered Democrats responded in favor of keeping Diablo Canyon online. About 24% said they opposed an extension, and around 30% provided no opinion.
“The poll finds significantly less partisan rancor about the state’s plan to extend the life of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant for another five years beyond its original scheduled closing date,” Berkely said.
Meanwhile, PG&E is still waiting to hear back from DOE about a possible bailout under the first round of the agency’s roughly $6 billion civil nuclear credits program, a spokesperson told RadWaste Monitor via email Oct. 4. The department has said that it would notify awardees around 30 days after the application deadline for the first funding cycle — which passed Sep. 6.
PG&E is seeking federal funding for Diablo Canyon even as Sacramento in late August passed sweeping climate legislation crafted by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) which, among other things, greenlit a state loan of up to $1.4 billion for the plant.
The measure gave the utility around six months, until late February, to request a license extension for Diablo Canyon with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — a required step for the plant to remain online past 2025.
