It worked out pretty much the way everyone expected.
Serious commission members, serious committee members, serious board members—all highly credentialed state-level appointees—mulled complex presentations, asked polite questions, heard hours of public comment, and then used the power of their office to give Pacific Gas & Electric exactly the answers it wanted regarding its Diablo Canyon Power Plant. Those answers were: yes, yes, and yes.
Yes, in December, to Coastal Commission permits. Yes, in mid-February, to Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee approvals of various safety studies. And, yes, this past Thursday afternoon, to Central Coast Regional Water Board permits. Those Water Board permits check the final box for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to complete its consideration of a 20-year extension for Diablo Canyon. PG&E is now hoping for that NRC golden ticket in “Q2,” according to a buoyant Tom Jones, the government agency hand-holder who is the earnest-looking face of PG&E at these meetings.
You may be thinking, Didn’t that nuclear plant — the one we live downwind of — get a five-year extension already? What’s up with the 20? Indeed it did. Senate Bill 846, adopted by the California Legislature on the last night of the 2022 session, conditionally gave PG&E five more years past the original 40-year licenses of Diablo’s two reactors.
The purpose was to help bridge a possible power shortfall in very specific — and brief — situations, such as the few hot summer nights when statewide demand could outstrip supply for several hours. The thought was that Diablo could help fill in as the state continued to build out its renewable energy portfolio. So state agencies scrambled to provide necessary permits and approvals. The five-year extension went into effect. It keeps the place running through 2030.
PG&E had to do a bit of scrambling itself, in part to take advantage of huge loans from the feds and the state. The company had been planning to shut the plant’s two nuclear reactors at the end of those two 40-year licenses, in 2024 and 2025. The state’s five-year extension precipitated the need for PG&E to get the most important okay of all — an operating license extension from the NRC. Conveniently, the plant can operate while the NRC deliberates. It’s interesting that PG&E asked for another 20 years, not just another five years. They say that’s because the NRC requires that standard number in an extension request. Not everyone agrees about that, which is a polite way of saying there are those who think PG&E is making an intentional misstatement. But, even more conveniently, the expected NRC 20-year-approval opens the way for the State legislature to be thinking about an extension to its own five-year extension. Of course it does.
So, in summary, the recent decisions at these various agencies are exhilarating to nuclear proponents and heartbreaking to those community advocates who helped secure the very shutdown agreement that the Legislature kicked to the curb in 2022. These community members see the huge cost to ratepayers and the existential dangers of Diablo Canyon, and grasp the much lower cost, the safety and enormous climate benefits of actual renewable energy sources. As a result, they do not share that glowing, pro-nuke zeal.
In their public comments, these community members, some from longtime, engaged nonprofits SLO Mothers for Peace, the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, California Coastkeeper Alliance, SLO Sierra Club and others, describe their views with passion and sharp humor and facts.
For example, they cite the encouraging finding of the California Energy Commission that renewable energy production and battery deployment have grown by an amount that is many times greater than the number of gigawatts provided by Diablo Canyon. In other words, the hot summer night issue is essentially a moot point. They cite PG&E’s own forecasts that Diablo will cost hundreds of millions of dollars more to operate each year than originally thought — costs that will be borne by ratepayers statewide.
They cite the multi-faultline earthquake hazard that PG&E wishes to wave off. Independent analysis continues to show that this is a noteworthy concern for a facility with possible embrittlement issues in its Unit 1 reactor and newly noticed cracks in the dry storage casks that hold radioactive spent fuel. Even though members of these government bodies may touch on these matters, sometimes with very pointed remarks and critiques, and sometimes just in a passing response to a member of the public, the ultimately acquiescent decisions from each dais continue to baffle and disappoint.
Why do these meetings work out this way? Cynics have thoughts. Certainly, in 2022 the governor made it very clear that he wanted Diablo to remain open and Thus It Is So. The word was received up and down the governmental org chart. Today, the storyline for extending the state’s five-year extension rests heavily on the projected need for AI Data Center power. This includes possibly manufactured uncertainty about whether the vibrant, ongoing renewable energy build-out can handle the load.
Back in 2022, a pressured Legislature did manage to put some off-ramps into SB 846 that could make it possible to close Diablo sooner than 2030. It now seems more likely that legislators will seek to extend the timeline, ignoring the data, the science, and the reality of what could be better accomplished for the state without Diablo. And an ancillary goal might be to cause the least possible friction for PG&E, our friendly Investor Owned Utility.
What other conclusion can be drawn from the Coastal Commission’s acceptance of new trails and some land for the public as an acceptable “out of kind” mitigation for Diablo’s being the largest polluter of California coastal waters. Or how about the Regional Water Board’s accepting the concept of an eventual shutdown of Diablo at some unknown date in the future as its own definition of a viable mitigation strategy for what Diablo is dumping into the Pacific. One could also question the collegial relationship between PG&E personnel and the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee, a body whose job is to inform the California Public Utilities Commission of operational safety at Diablo. Meetings of the committee can feel more like a team effort to accomplish PG&E’s goals and fend off an annoying public, than a truly independent effort to consider the safety status of the plant.
After last week’s five-hour Regional Water Board hearing on Diablo, which included expressions of concern by board members but resulted in a unanimous vote to approve the permits, board chair Jane Gray summed up a Diablo Canyon state of affairs that seems to exist well beyond her board. “We’re regulators. And we’re facilitators as such.”
Is that really what we want from government agencies that are to be looking out for us? Some will say, Yes, of course.
It seems to us that it’s an issue that each government agency will have another swing at, as possible extension requests, or new operational information about this old nuclear plant, become known and demand action. We hope those commissioners and committee members and board members will consider such an agenda item to be a decision, not of short-term convenience, but of existential importance.
