From the Los Angeles Times, August 12:
A last-minute proposal from Gov. Gavin Newsom could keep the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant open through 2035, a decade beyond its current closure date — in part by giving owner Pacific Gas & Electric Co. a $1.4-billion forgivable loan.
The proposal is part of draft legislative language distributed to state lawmakers late Thursday night. The bill, which has yet to be introduced in the Legislature, would also exempt the Diablo Canyon extension from the California Environmental Quality Act and several other environmental rules that nuclear opponents might otherwise use to challenge the extension.
Diablo Canyon is California’s single largest power source. Officials are worried that without it, the state could have trouble keeping the lights on — and air conditioners running — during intense summer heat waves. Newsom has also suggested that keeping the plant open would help fight climate change because Diablo doesn’t produce planet-warming pollution.
“Some would say it’s the righteous and right climate decision,” Newsom told The Times earlier this year.
The 2,250-megawatt power plant — which generated 6% of the state’s electricity in 2021 — is nestled along the Central Coast south of Morro Bay. Its fate has been a subject of controversy for decades, with then-Gov. Jerry Brown railing against the facility’s construction in the late 1970s amid a wave of anti-nuclear activism spurred by the Three Mile Island partial meltdown....
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That being said, the L.A. Times' Michael Hiltzik had an opinion piece this morning:
The plant's two generating units, which went online in 1985 and 1986, lie within 20 miles of four active earthquake faults.
The faults were apparently unknown to the plant's owner, Pacific Gas & Electric, which certified during the construction period that no such faults existed within that distance. Unit 2 was built in accordance with flawed blueprints.
What possible basis could there be for doing this in the final two weeks of the legislative session?...It's a gigantic take-it-or-leave-it package.What possible basis could there be for doing this in the final two weeks of the legislative session?...It's a gigantic take-it-or-leave-it package.
Ralph Cavanagh, Natural Resources Defense CouncilThere have been efforts to close the plant for years, gaining intensity as PG&E's atrocious safety record came to light; twice in the last two years the company has faced criminal charges for its role in igniting wildfires that burned thousands of acres, destroyed hundreds of structures and caused deaths and injuries. (The company pleaded guilty to 84 criminal counts in 2020.)
With all that in mind, plus the crippling expense of required seismic and environmental upgrades to the plant, PG&E agreed in 2016 to shut its two units down in 2024 and 2025, the original expiration dates of their federal licenses.
The shutdown deal was hailed as a landmark, closing the book on California's checkered history with nuclear power.
Despite all that, Diablo Canyon has suddenly emerged as a centerpiece of Gov. Gavin Newsom's plan to maintain the reliability of the state's electric grid in the face of increasing global warming.
With only days left in the legislative session, Newsom's office unveiled a proposal to keep Diablo Canyon operating for as long as another decade past the shutdown dates.
Newson's proposal would provide a $1.4-billion "forgivable" loan to the utility to cover maintenance costs and the expense of resubmitting the plant for federal licensing. The term "forgivable" means that the loan would really function a grant to the nation's largest private utility.
As my colleague Sammy Roth observes, the revival of Diablo Canyon would be exempt from state and local environmental reviews and coastal regulations.
Although under traditional utility economics, PG&E's electric customers have paid for the construction and operating costs of the plant, under the Newsom plan all California utility customers — in other words, almost everybody — would become responsible for the plant's $460 million in annual operating costs and $300 million in replacement power costs during Diablo Canyon outages.
Plainly, this scheme is lunacy....
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Personally I think the utility should go back to the original 1960's proposal of six reactors with two desalination plants to hydrate the water-deficient state.
But the California Coastal Commission just said no to a big desalination plant although there is one being built up in Antioch northeast of Berkeley (and along the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, home of the world famous smelt).
Here's a post dated December 21, 2021 that addresses some of the questions around the nuke and the future:
Regarding California's Shutdown of The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant
From MIT News, November 8:Q&A: Options for the Diablo Canyon nuclear plantResearchers argue the plant could provide multiple benefits for California, including desalinated water and clean hydrogen fuel.
