What Diablo Canyon site looked like during construction in 1969
When Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant was under construction, it was thought that as many as six units would be built instead of the two that were finished.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, California’s population was growing at a furious rate, almost doubling from 1950 (10.6 million) to 1970 (20 million), and utilities were in a desperate race to stay ahead of demand.
Hyperbole around the industry was that nuclear science could provide power too cheap to meter. It was a promise too good to be true.
A July 10, 1987, Telegram-Tribune series on the plant outlined how it went from a budgeted $320 million to $5.8 billion.
The cost threatened to bankrupt the utility until it was allowed to charge ratepayers to pay for the plant.
The utility blamed bad luck, protests, restrictive government policies and changes in the economy.
The Public Utility Commission staff said PG&E management was arrogant and short-sighted.
Protest groups said they kept the utility focused on safety.
The plant’s construction plans underwent a changing set of design standards as more was learned from an accident at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. Also during construction, the Hosgri Fault was discovered and evaluated off the coast. Bechtel Power Corp. was hired to finish construction for the utility after a blueprint error came to light.
Since Unit 1 went online in May 1985 and Unit 2 in March 1986, the plant has provided dependable 24-hour power, with breaks for refueling and maintenance.
It generates about 20% of PG&E’s power, enough for about 3 million customers. The plant also provides many head-of-household jobs to county residents.
There have been recent calls to extend the license of the plant with evidence of climate change regularly appearing in the news. The plant generates power without the carbon impacts of a coal or gas-fired plant.
And if anything, we have become even more dependent on electric devices in the half-century since the plant was first proposed though the state’s astronomical population growth has leveled off. Some new neighborhoods in the region are being constructed without natural gas utility lines.
However, Diablo Canyon owner PG&E has announced plans not to renew operating licenses for the two units.
The federal government never provided the promised storage for spent nuclear fuel, and the impact on fish larvae sucked into the cooling system has troubled regulators and resulted in fines.
Safely storing the radioactive waste produced by the plant is a task on a time scale that humans have never attempted before.
Nuclear disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi took place after Diablo opened, the electrical market in California went through a drastic change in regulation, and PG&E sold off small, inefficient generating plants like Morro Bay, which was eventually shut down. Meanwhile, massive solar farms and wind power facilities have been constructed in recent decades, each with their own environmental costs and technical limitations.
It was a much simpler story, absent women apparently, that Elliot Curry wrote, May 10, 1969, when construction was started, almost 20 years before the plant went online.
Progress drowns out Diablo surf
A stranger left suddenly at the mouth of Diablo Canyon on the coast of San Luis Obispo County might assume that it was indeed a very strange place for a football stadium.
A great rounded excavation, like an amphitheater, has been cut into the coastal shelf.
Men and machines are at work in every direction, digging, filling, blasting, hauling, testing earth and stone.
The construction of the $188,413,000 PG&E nuclear power unit is on schedule and gaining momentum with every passing week.
This job is going to last for a long time and will call for many men with many skills.
Walter Burn of Jamestown, Calif., was one of a detail working at cutting away a rock ledge this week when a Telegram-Tribune photographer dropped by. Burke released the pressure on his jackhammer and for a moment the sound of the surf could be heard breaking on the rocks at the entrance to the once lonely cove.
Working with Burn were Wayne Hummel of Oceano and Doug Weatherly of Avila Beach. Nearby was Wayne Key of Paso Robles, operating a back hoe.
For two years the Diablo Canyon plant was blueprints, engineering studies, PUC hearings, AEC hearings, legal briefs.
Today it is men and machines, lunch buckets, payroll and hard hats.
About 150 men are working at the site, 35 of them PG&E employee. Most of the others are employed under excavating and earth moving contracts by Walter Brothers of San Luis Obispo.
During the excavation stage, employment will remain about as it is. Next year however, as plant installation gets under way, employment is expected to go as high as 500.
Even at this early stage about $9 million worth of construction has either been completed or is underway on the Diablo Canyon project.
The excavation for the dome-like reactor containment structure and the turbo-generator is moving rapidly toward completion.
Next will come the foundation forms into which between 80,000 and 90,000 cubic yards of concrete will be poured.
Work is also moving rapidly on the massive fill at the mouth of Diablo Canyon on which the switchyards will be built. Two million cubic yards of earth are being moved.
The men who drive the earth movers come down a rollercoaster hillside carrying loads of 50 to 55 yards of earth at a trip.
A driver’s license is not enough for this job. It takes skill and nerve — no mistakes allowed.
Robert V. Farley, resident engineer for the project, heads the PG&E crew immediately responsible for progress and quality of the work. Laurence Rasmussen and Terry Ewald are his immediate assistants.
M.H. Chandler, manager of the station construction department of PG&E, is a frequent visitor for the San Francisco office, because this is now the biggest construction job on the system.
One of the veterans of the project at this point is neither an engineer nor scientist. He is Bill Young, the cook, who presides over the kitchen and dining room provided for PG&E employees if they wish to make use of it. Young has been on the job here nine months.
Those who make a habit of eating there, hope that he stays for the duration.
If all six units are built at the Diablo Canyon site, that could take 20 years.
This story was originally published December 18, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
