What will it cost to keep Diablo Canyon running? It’s time to get specific
We are entering uncharted territory.
After nearly six years of preparations to shut down the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, a bill nearing a vote in Sacramento has been drafted for the express purpose of canceling that process and turning preparations for shut down into preparations for extended operation.
It follows on a previous bill that laid the groundwork for this about-face by setting up a reserve fund of up to $75 million to extend the operations of any power plants scheduled for termination, should the state choose to extend their lives.
That list includes Diablo Canyon, but that bill did not include any estimate of how much money would be required to keep the plant open beyond its scheduled 2025 shut down. Essentially, the legislators agreed to allocate funds without knowing the cost.
The budget trailer bill that will be voted on this month asks them to do it again.
A $1.4 billion state loan and a hoped-for portion of $6 billion in federal funds are to be directed primarily to the cost of getting Diablo’s license extended. An estimate of what it will actually cost to keep a 40-year-old nuclear power plant operational 10 years past the scheduled termination date of its operating license appears nowhere in the bill.
We are now talking about real money. There can be no more lack of specifics.
There also needs to be a reckoning between Gov. Gavin Newsom’s much-disputed claim that keeping Diablo Canyon on line is necessary to avoid blackouts and the statement of the California Public Utilities Commission that its extensive renewable energy procurements “will ensure that we can keep the lights on during periods of greatest demand, even as we retire Diablo Canyon and other natural gas plants.”
Concerns have been expressed about impediments to the state’s implementation of renewable energy projects. On July 28, the L.A. Times reported that “solar-plus-storage projects that officials feared would be delayed by supply-chain slowdowns or other economic disruptions ended up plugging into the grid on schedule.” The legislature will need to discuss this before it votes on the bill to extend Diablo’s operating life.
Many of the daunting technical, safety and operational problems faced by any attempt to execute a 180-degree turn from decommissioning to continued operation were discussed at a recent meeting of the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee. The legislature must have that discussion.
A comparison has been made of the cost of continuing to operate and maintain the nuclear power plant and the cost of replacing it with a portfolio mix of 75% renewable energy and 25% energy efficiency technologies. Of those two options, the study found that renewables-plus-efficiency would cost $12 billion and that keeping Diablo running would cost $17 billion. The conclusions of this study formed the basis of PG&E’s 2016 decision to shutter the plant.
As Sen. John Laird told CalMatters, “The shuttering of Diablo Canyon has been years in the making, with hundreds of millions of dollars already committed for decommissioning. Along with the residents of the Central Coast, I’m eager to see what the governor and federal officials have in mind.”
All Californians need to see a full accounting of the cost of continued operations of Diablo Canyon in the budget trailer bill that legislators will be voting on by the end of this month.
Andrew Christie is director of the Sierra Club Santa Lucia Chapter; Rochelle Becker is executive director of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility; Mary Ciesinski is executive director of the Environmental Center of San Luis Obispo (ECOSLO).
This story was originally published August 12, 2022 at 12:14 PM.