Governor Newsom Wants to Extend the Life of California’s Lone Nuclear Plant

News & Politics

Talking a good green game is easy. Say enough buzzwords — “renewable,” “sustainable,” “eco-friendly” — and you’re immediately accepted into the fraternity of enviro-hipsters who have a lot to say about mundane things like power generation and getting through the day without blackouts or brownouts.

A little more than 8% of California’s energy needs are filled by wind power. One nuclear power plant — the El Diablo facility in San Luis Obispo County — supplies 10% of the state’s power needs. Activists managed to secure legislation to close the plant by 2025, but with those kinds of numbers, why is it even controversial to keep El Diablo open?

Your problem is that you don’t think like a green fanatic. Mention “nuclear power” and the response you’re likely to get is “China syndrome” or “Chernobyl” — neither of which has anything to do with the reality of nuclear power in 21st century America. The scenario in the Jack Lemon film was proven to be ludicrous the year after the film was released when a real-life nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania nearly happened. As expected, the safeguards put in place worked well and a disaster was avoided.

As for Chernobyl, there were too many blatantly stupid mistakes to list, but the bottom line is that only in a Communist country would a disaster like that ever take place.

Related: Greens Retreat as Coal Power Makes European Comeback

Anti-nuke activists succeeded in having the El Diablo plant cease operations in 2025. But something happened along the way to shutting down a perfectly good nuclear power plant that has changed the minds of even anti-nuke stalwarts like California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

California’s plan to generate all its electricity via wind and solar power isn’t working out quite the way they planned it. In fact, the operators so oversold wind and solar power generation that there’s a shortfall — and will be well into the 2030s.

Politico:

The proposed legislation would direct the California Public Utilities Commission to set a new closure date of Oct. 31, 2029 for one unit, and Oct. 31, 2030, for the other, according to the governor’s office. By 2026, regulators could consider an extension, but not beyond Oct. 31, 2035.

The bill would carve out an exemption from state regulations to allow operators to maintain operations at the plant without conducting extensive technical analysis of the environmental effects.

Extending the life of the nuclear plant would come at a cost. Pacific Gas & Electric, which operates the plant, applied to the U.S. Department of Energy’s $6 billion program to preserve the operations of nuclear power plants — though it’s unclear how much will be granted, or when. The language proposed by Newsom’s office this week would allow the state to grant PG&E a $1.4 billion forgivable loan to cover the costs of relicensing. Any extension would additionally require approvals by federal, state and local regulatory entities, the governor’s office said.

There have been several major power interruptions in the last decade and as Slate reports, much of it has been caused by overestimating the amount of power generated by wind and solar and underestimating what was needed.

For years, renewable energy enthusiasts have insisted that most of the problems of the electric grid were caused by outdated and inflexible coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy technologies. A system built on solar panels and wind turbines, smart meters, electricity storage, and payments for flexible demand would lower costs and improve reliability for everyone. Some academic studies showed that renewables could easily supply 80 percent or more of an electric grid’s demands.

But with non-hydroelectric renewable technologies, mostly solar and wind, generating about 30 percent of California’s electricity today, we are witnessing the types of obstacles and problems that these new technologies introduce.

Newsom is caught in a political trap and it’s glorious to see. He spent years rising through the Democratic ranks as a big supporter of the greens. Now he must swallow his pride and go hat in hand to PG&E, begging them to keep running the El Diablo nuclear plant, or California will eventually be a lot darker.

So El Diablo will continue to be part of California’s power future — despite the previous scare tactics by greens that got the plant scheduled to close in the first place. There’s enough schadenfreude to go around for everyone.

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