Scientists, academics and entrepreneurs join call to keep state’s last reactors operating
Nearly 80 scientists, academics and entrepreneurs from a range of disciplines, including former US energy secretary Steven Chu, sent a letter to California governor Gavin Newsom asking him to delay the closure of the two-unit Diablo Canyon, the state’s lone commercial nuclear facility and its top source of green electricity.
“The threat of climate change is too real and too pressing to leap before we look,” said the letter. “Considering our climate crisis, closing the plant is not only irresponsible, the consequences could be catastrophic.
“Considering our climate crisis, closing the plant is not only irresponsible, the consequences could be catastrophic,” the letter said.
The letter was organised by Isabelle Boemeke, a model and founder and executive director of Save Clean Energy, a nonprofit group that promotes the emissions benefits of nuclear power.
The letter detailed how Diablo Canyon is critical to the state’s clean energy goals, which the state is legally mandated to meet, and how it seems unlikely the state will be able to meet those goals with the plant’s current scheduled decommissioning.
The letter said climate-change inducing natural gas plants appear to be the “only functional alternative to immediately replace” Diablo Canyon. It used the closure of the San Onofre nuclear station, also in California, to highlight how natural gas-fired energy generation increased to offset the lost nuclear generation. San Onofre has three units, all of which have been permanently shut down.
In 2016, utility PG&E filed an application to shut down Diablo Canyon in, saying the state’s new energy policies would significantly reduce the need for the station’s electricity output.
Under the proposal, the two units, which began commercial operation in the mid-80s, will be retired when their operating licences expire in November 2024 and August 2025.
According to a recent report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, delaying the shutdown of Diablo Canyon by 10 years to 2035 could provide multiple benefits by simultaneously helping to stabilise the state’s electric grid, provide desalinated water to supplement the area’s chronic water shortages, and provide carbon-free hydrogen fuel for transportation.
