Why California is shutting down its last nuclear plant

[Klaralven]

California is not keeping up with the energy demands of its residents.

In August 2020, hundreds of thousands of California residents experienced rolling electricity blackouts during a heat wave that maxed out the state’s energy grid.

The California Independent System Operator issues flex alerts asking consumers to cut back on electricity usage and move electricity usage to off-peak hours, typically after 9 p.m. There were 5 flex alerts issued in 2020 and there have been 8 in 2021, according to CAISO records.

On Friday, Sept. 10, the U.S. Department of Energy granted the state an emergency order to allow natural gas power plants to operate without pollution restrictions so that California can meet its energy obligations. The order is in effect until Nov. 9.

At the same time, the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, owned by Pacific Gas and Electric and located near Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo County, is in the middle of a decade-long decommissioning process that will take the state’s last nuclear power plant offline. The regulatory licenses for reactor Unit 1 and Unit 2, which commenced operation in 1984 and 1985 will expire in November 2024 and August 2025, respectively.

Diablo Canyon is the state’s only operating nuclear power plant; three others are in various stages of being decommissioned. The plant provides about 9% of California’s power, according to the California Energy Commission, compared with 37% from natural gas, 33% from renewables, 13.5% from hydropower, and 3% from coal.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/02/why-is-california-closing-diablo-canyon-nuclear-plant.html

[Rollo]

1. Plus the advent of EV cars will only make the situation worse...

...unless there's a step up in electricity production. Perhaps from solar plants?

[hunter]

20. Okay, let's destroy the world to save it!

Bulldozing previously undeveloped land to build solar plants is obscene.

There's plenty of land that's already been ruined by humans. Put solar panels there.

Parking lot and rooftop solar is a very common thing in my community.

I'm a radical environmentalist. I oppose *ALL* solar and wind development on previously undeveloped land or ocean environments.

[lagomorph777]

32. I was just about to argue with you, then read the rest of your post.

Yes, rooftops, parking lots, even (surprisingly) farmland that sometimes could use a little shade for the plants (depending on crop and local conditions).

Also, mix in wind and storage at the same locations. Make the source a higher-value one, by making it less intermittent.

[cinematicdiversions]

2. The math is really tough if you want to fight global warming without nuclear.

I hope California is not making the same mistakes Germany made.

[Amishman]

10. Yup, solar and wind need to be a big part, but they cannot power us alone

We need new nuclear plants using safer and more efficient designs (which do exist on paper). Fuel reprocessing to reduce waste is also critical.

[former9thward]

3. Ironically CA is forced to get energy from Arizona's nuclear supply.

The Palo Verde nuclear plant in AZ supplies CA energy needs.

[Klaralven]

6. California was the largest net electricity importer of any state in 2019

California utilities partly own and import power from several power plants in Arizona and Utah. In addition, California’s electricity imports include hydroelectric power from the Pacific Northwest, largely across high-voltage transmission lines running from Oregon to the Los Angeles area.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46156

[StevieM]

4. Because they are being totally irresponsible.

We should be dramatically expanding our use of nuclear power, not curtailing it.

[temporary311]

23. Not sure if somewhere as earthquake prone

as southern California is a good place for those nuclear plants, though.

[Act_of_Reparation]

30. Why?

I mean, SoCal is littered with skyscrapers. If they can be engineered to handle an earthquake, I think a reactor containment structure would be fine.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

5. +1 on everything above! SO LAME. My cousin worked at DCNP his entire career

And his wife still works there now.

Terrible idea shutting it down.

[fescuerescue]

7. This is good. Let the red states nuke up their states and burn coal there.

Keep California clean.

[retread]

8. Blatant attempt to link coal and nuclear. n/t

[fescuerescue]

11. They are quite different things. Even have different words for each

[sarisataka]

13. Good thing California has those giant

Air purifiers at their border to keep the pollution out and be an island of immunity to climate change...

[fescuerescue]

15. Oh course they don't. That what we call a strawman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Unfortunately, California doesn't run the other 49 states and 194 countries. If it did the world would be a much nicer place.

No. They can only manage their own territory. And they do it well.

[sarisataka]

16. It's not a strawman

It's pointing out the reality that what happens outside of California's borders will still affect California.

They can only manage their own territory. And they do it well.

Like their water? They are good stewards of their resources and use only sustainable amounts of their supply?

[fescuerescue]

17. That's a different logical fallacy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts

Wikipedia has alot of them listed.

for your reading pleasure:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_fallacy

[Klaralven]

22. California's solution to environmental problems was envisioned by HG Well's "The Time Machine"

With middle/upper class Californians in the role of the Eloi and Mexicans/Asians in the role of Morlocks.

[NickB79]

9. The megadrought is hammering Western hydro production as well

Oroville. Mead. Powell. As the West continues to dry thanks to climate change, hydroelectric will keep falling. Losing nuclear and hydro is a serious blow.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/06/california-shuts-down-major-hydroelectric-plant-amid-severe-drought.html

[The Revolution]

12. Why I doubt we'll do anything about climate change

Many people that are actually concerned about climate change seem to vastly overestimate the dangers of nuclear power, especially versus burning fossil fuels. Germany is shutting down their nuclear plants and bringing new coal plants ONLINE to make up the difference FFS.

[Johnny2X2X]

14. Nuclear technology has come a long way

It's safer than ever and we have new reactors that make dealing with the waste much easier and safer. There are even molten salt reactors being developed that will allow reactors to be located away from water altogether.

[Sibelius Fan]

18. Nuclear power is safer than ever...until it isn't.

[The Revolution]

21. Much safer than fossil fuels

The death toll from fossil fuel air pollution is much higher than that from nuclear disasters. Something like hydro power is also safe, until a dam fails.

[hunter]

19. Why? Fuck the earth! Hybrid natural gas / renewable systems are profitable!

Natural gas is the energy source that will destroy civilization, not nuclear power. Renewable energy enthusiasts never mention this because natural gas keeps their renewable energy fantasies alive.

Experiments with hybrid energy systems in places like California, Germany, and Denmark have failed. Renewable energy will never displace fossil fuels for the simple reason that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. The same is true at any scale, from small off-grid cabins to regional electric grids.

The situation is so bad in Germany that they've had to build new gas pipelines to import natural gas from Russia, something that will have extreme environmental and political consequences.

If we had any sense we'd pick a date to quit fossil fuels entirely, say twenty years from now, and fight for that as if our survival depended on it. Because it does.

[localroger]

24. Diablo Canyon is built next to an earthquake fault line

Whatever your views on nuclear in general, this is a plant that needs to be taken offline. Unfortunately the fault wasn't positively identified until after the plant was in operation. It was just plain built in a bad place.

[hunter]

25. Any natural gas power plant is worse.

.

[localroger]

26. Well, that will probably be true until the earthquake

It doesn't take a natural disaster to make a fossil fuel burning power plant a disaster. (I know, I have actually done work in a coal burning power plant. Ugh.) However, with nuclear it's the edge cases that (sometimes literally) kill you.

[hunter]

27. Natural gas and other fossil fuels are destroying the world as we know it...

... and will probably be the root cause of this civilization's collapse.

Wind and solar power are never going to replace fossil fuels, especially while natural gas is accepted as a "backup" power source.

Nuclear power is the only technology that can displace fossil fuels entirely.

The human race has painted itself into a corner. Our population is so large we've become dependent upon high density energy sources for our food, shelter, clean water and every other aspect of our daily lives. We can't just quit fossil fuels and expect wind or solar power will support us.

The idea that wind and solar will magically replace fossil fuels is just another flavor of climate change denial.

The odds of Diablo Canyon failing are less than the odds that the Fukushima Power plants would fail. Even in the case of Fukushima the damage done and the lives lost to the tsunami itself far, far exceeded the chaos of the power plant failures.

I'll speculate that the non-radioactive toxins spilled by the tsunami caused more public health problems and had worse environmental impacts than the failed power plants.

But nobody gives a shit about greenhouse gasses and toxins that don't make a radiation counter buzz.

I was an anti-nuclear activist protesting the construction of Diablo Canyon in the late 'seventies. I know the place well.

I've changed my mind about nuclear power.

Sometimes I ask how many people became anti-fossil fuel activists after a fossil fuel disaster poisoned the nearby town of Avila Beach? In the 1990s several blocks of that town had to be torn down and 6,750 truckloads of contaminated soil removed to a dump 150 miles away in Bakersfield.

Everybody knows about Fukushima. But nobody pays attention to the fossil fuel catastrophes large and small that kill people every day, and destroy whatever is left of the natural environment we are familiar with.

[localroger]

29. Unfortunately, nuclear isn't gonna cut it either

We do not have the capacity to mine and process enough fuel to convert the world to nuclear, and we have no answer for what to do with all the waste. It's not just the edge case disasters like TMI, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and a few other lesser known ones that are the problem. It creates a giant pile of chemical and radiological toxins both in the mining and processing to create fuel and in the waste that remains after the fuel is used up.

The only thing preventing wind and solar from taking up the load is storage so that we can harvest the energy when it is available and save it to use when we need it. Of course we hope for a solution to that which doesn't involve mining a huge pile of lithium, which is its own problem...

Maybe the fundamental problem is just that there are too many of us. I've made my contribution to the future by not having children.

[hunter]

31. That's simply not true.

Nuclear power is a mature technology. The first nuclear power plant started generating power nearly seventy years ago.

We know how to deal with the waste and we know how to build reactors fueled by uranium that's already been mined. We know how to build reactors that are "walk away" safe. We just have to do it.

It's ridiculous to claim that something that's been done is impossible. France aggressively built nuclear power plants in the 'seventies and were able to close their last coal mine twenty years ago. Anti-nuclear Germany is still burning coal and has been forced to import increasing amounts of natural gas from Russia, a problem that may have grave political consequences.

The difference between toxic fossil fuel waste and nuclear waste is the volume. The volume of nuclear waste is small and can be contained. That's not true of fossil fuel waste.

Existing light water reactors use only a small fraction of the potential energy in their nuclear fuel, roughly 5%. This used fuel can be reprocessed and mixed with existing stockpiles of depleted uranium for use in modern, more fuel efficient, reactor designs. Uranium and thorium can be extracted from existing mine tailings. We don't do this because freshly mined uranium is cheap.

Currently there is no technology capable of storing solar and wind energy for long periods of time. The storage capacity of batteries is measured in minutes while wind and solar outages can last for weeks. This problem is the same at any scale, from a small cabin in the woods to a regional electric grid. Solar and wind systems are simply not practical without fossil fuel backup power.

I think the most horrible thing we learned from Chernobyl and Fukushima is that humans going about their ordinary lives do more damage to the natural environment than radioactive fallout from the worst sorts of nuclear accidents.

[Xolodno]

28. Good.

A massive earthquake zone and located next to the beach, the same with San Onofre. What happened in Japan can happen here.

Out here, they have been plastering roofs all over schools, homes, etc. with solar panels and continue to do so. Eventually we'll get there. Probably never be an energy exporter but we haven't been for a long time and that was with all the nuclear plants.

And nuclear isn't pollution free, there is toxic nuclear waste that has to be stored.

Finally, economics. The cost to generate electricity via nuclear is becoming more expensive. Particular since energy demand has been slowly declining in California. We're a long way from our peak days during Enron.