By Tom Fudge / KPBS / Dec. 12, 2024
San Diego County’s nuclear power plant, San Onofre, was closed more than 10 years ago. But the Diablo Canyon plant is still open and cranking out 18,000 gigawatts a year.
The contract for the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant was set to expire by the end of next year. But a bill passed two years ago by the legislature has kept it open an additional five years, closing one reactor in 2029 and the other in 2030. The plant, near San Luis Obispo, generates nearly 10% of California’s total energy. But critics say it’s actually giving the state too much energy, especially in the spring when hydropower production is at its highest.
Energy economist Richard McCann works with the consulting firm M. Cubed. He said in 2023 California generated enough hydropower to match the power we already got from the nuclear plant. “That combination made it so that we had a lot of excess power in the system. It’s not that there was excess solar power. It was excess power. And the bigger culprit for that excess power is Diablo Canyon, which was supposed to be retired,” McCann said.
McCann said when the state has too much power, it can either try to sell it to neighboring states, often at rock bottom prices, or it has to just dump the energy, which then goes to waste. Solar power has become a plentiful clean energy source that the state may have underestimated when it chose to extend Diablo Canyon.
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If CA. has so much power then why does APS sell power to it from the Palo Verde Nuke plant ? CA. better take a closer look at how the US power grid operates. A lot of power companies co-own each others power plants and are selling energy back and forth between them.
The article on the Diablo Canyon power plant missed some glaring realities. The article talked about plentiful hydroelectric power. We’re in a 20 year drought ! How long do you think that “plentiful” hydro. power is going to last ? Nevada and Arizona is already preparing contingency plans because of reduced water capacity to power Hoover Dam. Nuke plant running 24/7 is inefficient? I say no because you have access to power 24/7. And solar plants and wind farms don’t run 24/7 . If Ca. has so much energy the why are there “brownouts” in the summer ? Hmm. One thing not mentioned in the article was the big carbon foot it takes to to manufacture those solar panels and infrastructure. Same with the wind turbine blades etc. And don’t forget the landscape that must be torn up to lay down the transmission lines to get power to power distribution points. Diablo is too expensive to run ? Don’t approve of the rate increase. Then it will shut down as investors and the power company will lose money. Nuclear waste. Scary but manageable. The shipping containers would need an almost direct hit by a atom bomb to come apart. Storage is no problem. There’s a government nuclear waste storage facility in Nevada that would handle it. Earthquakes ? Again look at how those shipping containers are build. No what CA. and America needs is a diversified power grid.