California’s Democratic legislators may have monkey wrenched Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to extend the life of the state’s sole surviving nuclear power plant with some $400 million in a first installment of taxpayer money with more to follow.
As the AP reported, the solons June 13 threw a spanner into Newsom’s proposed loan to highly unpopular Pacific Gas & Electric to keep the twin 1,100-MW Diablo Canyon pressurized water reactors in San Luis Obispo County in service until 2030. PG&E and the state agreed in 2016 to keep the plant running only until the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses for the two reactors expire in this year and 2025, phasing out operations in the meantime. PG&E had earlier petitioned the NRC for a license extension.
The California Public Utilities Commission approved the closure plan in 2018 and PG&E withdrew its request to the NRC for a license extension. The NRC has liberally granted requests for license extensions in recent years.
But by 2022 concerns about shutting down a large source of electricity that produces no carbon dioxide emissions overcame the desire to close what has long been a controversial plant in a state where nuclear power once flourished but fell on hard times at the turn of the century.
In August 2022, Newsom performed an about-face and proposed a $1.4 billion loan to PG&E to keep the plant in service for another 5-10 years. The legislature quickly bought in, passing Senate Bill 846. That legislation has a provision instructing the CPUC (composed entirely of Newsom appointees) to track cost increases at the plant and scuttle the deal if the results “prove to be economically disadvantageous, or even financially catastrophic, for California electricity consumers.”
In November 2022, the U.S. Department of Energy approved a grant of $1.1 billion to PG&E for the Diablo Canyon life extension by tapping a $6 billion allocation for nuclear life extensions in the Biden administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.
The California law provided the background for the warning from the legislators to the governor, as they wrestle over a new state budget with deficits approaching a stunning $45 billion. The solons are worried that PG&E will be unable to repay the loan, including the first $400 million. A dispute rages over the incremental costs of keeping the plant running.
Environmental opponents of Diablo Canyon, including Friends of the Earth, which spearheaded the campaign to shut down the 2.2 GW San Onofre nuke in Southern California in 2013, pointed to PG&E’s latest data on the costs of Diablo Canyon life support. PG&E filings at the CPUC initially said the life extension would cost about $5 billion, then raised the estimate to $8.3 billion.
Opponents challenged the latest utility estimate as a low-ball figure. At a meeting the same day as the legislators’ message to Newsome, a meeting organized by the Environmental Working Group claimed that a more realistic cost was over $12 billion. Former NRC member Peter Bradford said at the meeting, “The people in charge of managing the plants really aren’t the ones exposed to the consequences of cost overruns. They’re pointed towards federal taxpayers, state taxpayers, California ratepayers from the southern tip of the state to the northern end.”
What became Diablo Canyon has been controversial from its earliest moments. PG&E in 1963 proposed a nuclear plant to meet its growing electric demand. The utility preliminary state and federal Atomic Energy Commission approval for a site at Bodega Bay, some 50 miles from San Francisco. But the San Francisco-based Sierra Club, including its executive director and genius publicist David Brower (1912-2000), opposed the site after discovering that the site was atop the legendary San Andreas earthquake fault. Brower also harbored overall doubts about nuclear power. PG&E abandoned Bodega in 1964.
The utility then shifted its sights to a site in San Luis Obispo County’s environmentally sensitive Nipomo Dunes area. Local environmentalists, calling themselves “Dunites” organized to oppose the plan. The club, fresh from victories in stopping new hydropower plants in the Grand Canyon, took up the Dunites’ cause. PG&E in 1966 said it would move the project to a rugged, rocky seaside location, Diablo Canyon. The club’s leadership, including Brower, agreed to the switch.
But that action caused a split among the club’s members. Brower later publicly regretted the approval and criticized the club’s board for backing the site. In large part because of the internal warfare over the Diablo Canyon site, Brower and some of his supporters left the Sierra Club and formed Friends of the Earth.
Despite growing concerns about earthquake risks at the Diablo Canyon site (the California coast is part of the tectonically active “Pacific Ring of Fire”) and the formation of a feisty opposition group named San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, NRC gave PG&E a construction permit.
Unit 1 construction began in mid-1968 and unit 2 followed in late 1970. Construction drew massive protests, including some two thousand arrests for civil disobedience during two weeks in 1981. The first unit won an NRC operating license in May 1985. Unit 2 ran into a snag, when inspectors discovered that the contractors had used the unit 1 plans. The NRC decided this was insignificant and the second unit won NRC approval in March, 1986. The cost of the plant in 2023 dollars was $16.4 billion.
–Kennedy Maize
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