The construction of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant began in 1968, kicking off decades of protests led by anti-nuclear and anti-war activists.
But on the Central Coast, the surrounding communities have come to accept — and even support — California's only operating nuclear power plant.
Now, as state lawmakers consider whether Diablo Canyon should stay open past its 2030 planned decommissioning date, hometown support for the plant comes at a critical time.
A shift in public opinion
Zach Mousharrafie, a third-year physics major at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, says many no longer associate nuclear energy with Cold War anxieties.
“ We haven't experienced a nuclear disaster in our generation,” said Mousharrafie, who was only six years old when a major earthquake hit a power plant in Fukushima, Japan. “We haven't really experienced the threat of nuclear war.”
Mousharrafie is the president of a pro-nuclear energy student club at Cal Poly called Nuclear is Clean Energy, or NICE.
Club vice president Hari Rajah grew up nearby. He didn’t think about Diablo Canyon much as a kid, but that changed when he toured the plant in high school.
“I had heard about Diablo [Canyon] before that, but I didn't really care or understand what it was until actually seeing it,” Rajah said. “That was really my intro to the idea that nuclear power is a pretty good solution, at least in our current world, for producing electricity cleanly.”
“We need to build huge amounts of clean power,” Mousharrafie said. “Because the climate crisis is a ‘now’ issue, right?”
Diablo Canyon produces roughly 9% of California’s electricity, and 17% of the state’s low-carbon energy.
Opponents believe it should be shut down due to its location near multiple fault lines and the nuclear waste it produces.
The power plant had been scheduled to close last year, but concerns over grid reliability led to state lawmakers extending operations until 2030.
In fact, the campaign to keep Diablo Canyon running has been so successful that proponents — a coalition of Central Coast politicians, nuclear energy advocates and business groups — now want to keep it open until 2045.
‘ We still believe that it's not safe’
In the ‘70s and ‘80s, thousands met near Avila Beach to protest the construction of Diablo Canyon, including a young woman named Linda Seeley.
“Having known about Three Mile Island, I thought, ‘I don't want a nuclear power plant near my three kids,’” Seeley said.
Seeley is now the Vice President of Mothers For Peace, an anti-nuclear activist group. She joined shortly after moving to San Luis Obispo in 1982.
The organization was a lot larger then, back when more people were vocally opposed to nuclear energy.
“ In the past 15 years, it seems as though people have started really accepting nuclear power as a fine solution to our problems,” she said. “The nuclear industry has done a great job of brainwashing young people.”
A pro-nuclear countermovement
Mothers for Peace is still a presence in the area, but there’s been a noticeable shift. NICE, the student club, is far from the only pro-nuclear organization in town. Similar groups can be spotted tabling at farmers markets and Earth Day events in San Luis Obispo.
Ann Bisconti is a researcher who studies public opinion around nuclear energy. She says support for nuclear energy has grown since the ‘80s, but the area surrounding Diablo Canyon is unique.
“One of the things that I've observed is that there is a lot more interest in activism among those who are for nuclear energy in [the] area,” Bisconti said.
A possible explanation for the shift is that Diablo Canyon is a large employer. It’s pulled many people, especially nuclear energy professionals, to the area over the last forty years.
In 2022, a small poll commissioned by the think tank Data for Progress showed 74% of voters in San Luis Obispo County wanted to keep the plant open.
Bisconti says her research finds that people who live within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant tend to support them.
“They have taken ownership in the plant,” Bisconti said “They know people who work there, they do a lot of community activities together. They go to church, they go to synagogue, they play baseball.”
Despite that goodwill, anti-nuclear activists are still fighting back.
In April, multiple groups, including Mothers for Peace, petitioned the Central Coast Water Board to edit an important certification Diablo Canyon received this February. The activist groups wanted the document to expire in 2030, hampering the plant’s ability to run past its scheduled decommissioning date.
Support for the plant is more relevant than ever
Early in the year, the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors began circulating a letter, addressed to the California State Legislature, in support of extending Diablo Canyon’s operations until 2045.
Cities across the county signed on, including the coastal towns of Arroyo Grande and Grover Beach.
In addition to continued operations, the letter also asks PG&E to continue paying taxes on the plant. The company has paid millions of dollars a year to communities near Diablo Canyon through a property tax scheme and a settlement, including $4 million to the San Luis Coastal School District.
That’s not the only way PG&E has generated goodwill for the power plant.
“If you go to any celebration of an opening of any park or you know, the community center, a performing arts place, PG&E is always one of the main contributors to it,” said Seeley, the anti-nuclear activist. “That's baked in, in this community.”
In fact, PG&E is a financial supporter of KCBX.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently renewed Diablo Canyon’s operating license until 2045.
Now, the final decision of whether to extend operations is in the hands of state lawmakers. Some of their constituents are pushing to close it down, but many people would like to see it stay.
Diablo Canyon has operated for 40 years, running in the background without any major safety incident, slowly becoming part of the status quo. It’s possible that fact has contributed to the plant’s popularity more than anything else.
Editor’s note: PG&E is a financial supporter of KCBX.
This story was edited with support from The California Newsroom, a collaboration of public media outlets throughout the state with NPR as its national partner.
