There are several upcoming opportunities for Central Coast residents to comment on the future of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. They come amid the ongoing debate over how, and if, the plant's life should be extended.
The plant near Avila Beach was scheduled to close in 2024 and 2025, until the California legislature voted last year to try to delay that deadline. They authorized a $1.4 billion loan to the plant’s operator, utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), to go through the process of extending Diablo’s life until 2030.
The vote was a response to an energy crisis in California and Governor Gavin Newsom’s push to keep carbon-free energy like nuclear power on the state’s energy grid amid projected shortages and blackouts.
David Weisman is with the nonprofit Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, which describes itself as a nuclear watchdog group. He’s an avid speaker at all the various hearings and public comment opportunities related to Diablo Canyon.
"As with everything Diablo, the devil is always in the details, and those remain extraordinarily complex. They involve a multiple number of agencies both at the state level and clearly at the federal level. It falls upon certain advocacy organizations to have to take on this rather enormous task of parsing through all the different parts of this picture that have to come together to make the governor's dream a reality," Weisman said.
The most recent big news about Diablo has to do with PG&E’s application to renew its federal license. The utility can’t continue to operate the plant without a license renewal from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
After the legislature passed the bill to try to extend Diablo’s life, Pacific Gas & Electric asked the NRC to reconsider an old application to renew the plant which they submitted in 2009. PG&E withdrew that application in 2018 after deciding they would be decommissioning the plant, and no longer needed to renew the license.
In January, the NRC rejected that request to reuse the old renewal application, meaning PG&E now has to submit a new one — a lengthy process that will likely happen later this year. The denial was met with praise from those advocating for more scrutiny on the extension process, including Weisman himself.
"Quite clearly, the plant has been on a downgraded situation, on a glide path to closure. And maintenance has been allowed to lapse, and equipment purchases, capital improvements have been deferred. So the NRC in this case is quite right in asserting, 'The plant you'd like us to review is not in the state it was when we last did that.'"
However, Weisman said of the NRC, "they are also capable of granting exemptions as they see fit."
Proponents of the extension like Newsom and many state legislators argue the plant’s life needs to be extended because it’s a major producer of carbon-free electricity, accounting for about 9% of the state’s total energy portfolio. They say that’s especially important as the state continues to face more severe weather as a result of climate change, and that keeping the lights on is the priority.
Weisman acknowledges those climate and energy concerns, but said the public has not seen enough data to conclude that keeping Diablo Canyon open is the way to address them.
"What is the actual [energy] reliability need for the state? Is there actually a need to extend Diablo Canyon, based on what we really know is coming online or won't be coming online? What are the actual costs involved with that, how much needs to be replaced, how much needs to be upgraded? Is the plant still seismically certifiable?"
"Finally, if we do a cost comparison analysis, is it cost effective to actually continue the operation of Diablo Canyon? Something you would have hoped the legislators would have had in front of them on the night they voted on this bill at 1:07 in the morning — but they didn't," Weisman said.
Weisman said he and the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility will keep pushing for this information to be available to lawmakers and the public. He also said the relicensing and continued operation of Diablo Canyon is not yet a done deal.
"There are a lot of moving parts that work here, any number of which could derail this governor's ambitious attempt, and they can come from forces that are external and as far away as Washington, D.C.," he said.
Weisman, a long-time critic of PG&E, said he feels another reason for the public to scrutinize what's happening with Diablo is PG&E's history of bankruptcy, safety incidents and more.
"They're not splitting atoms just for fun. This is a company that's been twice bankrupt in as many decades, a convicted a corporate felon [for] obstruction of justice, wildfire incidents, pipeline explosions at San Bruno. I would say we should all be aware, and pay attention and follow the money," he said.
Those claims about PG&E’s bankruptcies, convictions and safety failures are true. However, on the question of the company’s motive in reversing course on Diablo Canyon, spokesperson Suzanne Hosn said PG&E is committed to helping along the state’s transition to renewable energy and is following the state’s lead on how to do so.
“We're a state-regulated utility, so we follow the energy policies of the state of California. We've been asked to go in a different direction to meet the needs of the state of California, and until the conversation began about the shift to potential extended operations, we had been preparing for an orderly transition to decommissioning," she said.
Hosn also said the plant has never had a major safety failure, despite public concerns it's a threat to nearby communities.She said that record is what laid the foundation for the state and federal government to change course on Diablo's future.
"Our safe operating record and our lasting commitments to safety and reliability are what have enabled this great, renewed conversation about the plant's future on both state and national levels.”
Anyone interested in the ongoing conversation about Diablo Canyon can attend an informational listening session today from 9a.m.-3:30p.m. It's being held in-person at the SLO County Supervisor Chambers as well as live-streamed on Zoom. There will be opportunities to comment directly to representatives from state agencies, and more information is available here.
Next week, the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee is meeting Wednesday and Thursday at the Avila Lighthouse Suites, with a livestream option via Zoom as well. More information on that is online at dcisc.org.