Should Diablo Canyon operate for 20 more years? Here’s where SLO County supervisors stand
As a federal agency reviews PG&E’s application to keep the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant operating for another 20 years, the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors has chimed in to support keeping the plant open.
On Tuesday, the board voted 3-2 to pass a resolution supporting the operation of the nuclear power plant for up to another two decades.
It’s up to the state and the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to decide how long the plant keeps operating. Still, Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg wanted to pledge support for the power plant, most of all as a way to ensure a reliable source of carbon-free electricity.
“It’s clean energy,” Ortiz-Legg said. “When we’re trying to combat carbon, we have to look at everything we have — and we have a plant that has been operating safely, cleanly.”
The power plant generates 9% of California’s electricity and 17% of the state’s carbon-free electricity, according to the resolution.
Supervisors Debbie Arnold and John Peschong also supported the resolution.
“We are in the process of navigating a responsible energy transition,” Peschong said. “It’s going to take a very, very, very long time with wind and solar to be able to replace Diablo Canyon.”
Meanwhile, Supervisor Jimmy Paulding said he supports the continued operation of the power plant, but he wants to wait until safety studies mandated by SB 846, the legislation that gave PG&E funding to continue operating the plant, are complete until committing to a timeline.
“We have a duty to make sure that the continued operation for that horizon of 20 years is in fact safe,” Paulding said.
NRC to consider keeping plant open another 20 years
Diablo Canyon’s two reactors were originally scheduled to shut down in 2024 and 2025, when the plant’s licenses were set to expire.
In December, the California Public Utilities Commission allowed PG&E to keep operating the plant five years past its originally scheduled closure dates because not enough clean energy had been procured in the state to replace it.
Then, a day later, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted PG&E’s application to renew the plant’s operating license for another 20 years.
When evaluating the application, the NRC will review the safety and environmental impacts of the plant — a process that could take up to five years.
Should SLO County support 20 more years of Diablo Canyon?
In a letter to the board, State Sen. John Laird said it is “premature” to consider operating the power plant five years longer than its original closure date.
He pointed to SB 846, which granted $85 million in funding to San Luis Obispo County communities to mitigate for the plant’s closure and established a $350 million retention and retraining program for PG&E employees impacted by the shutdown. The bill called for various safety review processes, required approval from the California Coastal Commission and limited the plant’s operation to 2030 so as not to interfere with offshore wind, according to Laird’s letter.
In the letter, Laird said the safety analysis would not be finished until 2025, PG&E’s application to the California Coastal Commission for a Consistency Certification had not been completed, and challenges with the power plant’s once-through-cooling system had “not been resolved.”
“Many of the issues that might be involved in an additional 15-year extension have not even been resolved yet for the five-year extension set forth in SB 846,” Laird wrote. “Therefore, it is clear that any discussion of an extension beyond what was enacted with SB 846 is very premature.”
Gibson said he worried that the resolution would be “at-odds” with SB 846, so he voted against it.
Ortiz-Legg, however, disagreed. She said expressing support for continued operation of the plant would not interfere with safety studies or other processes initiated by SB 846.
“As the state goes through their processes, we are here to say that we want this plant to be operating as long as possible,” Ortiz-Legg said.
