California is wasting its best chance at a clean energy future by shunning nuclear power
At the COP26 United Nations climate conference last month, California’s presence was widely acknowledged by leaders from around the globe. That Scottish summit was a reminder that the world is looking to California to pave the way towards a sustainable, carbon-free future.
Unfortunately, California is not living up to the task, and our aversion to the cleanest and most efficient form of power generation available is to blame.
Without nuclear power, California will never reach its carbon reduction goals and be the leader the world needs to achieve a cleaner energy future.
Nuclear power is safe, cheap, efficient and the only realistic way to maintain our standards of reliability and availability while eliminating carbon emissions.
Detractors of nuclear power use scare tactics to paint the images of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island whenever discussions about nuclear arise. In spite of burst damns and natural gas lines exploding in neighborhoods, we continue to irrationally fear nuclear power due to a combination of misinformation and Hollywood hype.
The United States and California seem more susceptible to this fear than other parts of the developed world.
France derives roughly 70% of its electricity from nuclear power, which means that nukes likely kept the lights on while the Paris Climate Accords were being signed in 2015. France, England and Poland are all looking at nuclear power as a reliable energy source.
Meanwhile, in our country, we have seen a rapid phase-out of nuclear power. Plants in Crystal River, Fla., Kewaunee, Wisc., Pendleton, Vernon, Vt., Blair, Neb., and Forked River, N.J., have all shuttered in recent years and the energy they produced has been replaced almost entirely by natural gas. This regression back to carbon-heavy energy production has resulted in millions of tons of new CO2 entering the atmosphere from U.S. facilities.
California, in spite of its core commitment to carbon reduction and climate action, is part of the problem. The state’s last nuclear power plant in operation, Diablo Canyon, is scheduled to close by 2025.
A study conducted by researchers at Stanford and MIT earlier this year makes the case as strong as anyone possibly could: finding that keeping Diablo Canyon open until 2035 would result in a 10% reduction in statewide carbon emissions per year. Doing so would also be a boon to ratepayers, saving $2.6 billion. The same study also looked at the strong potential for re-engineering Diablo as a mixed-use facility that simultaneously desalinates water while producing energy.
The benefits of keeping Diablo open are extraordinary. The costs of closing it are severe.
It is clear the situation at Diablo is a part of a larger and more worrying trend in which nuclear power is effectively eliminated from consideration as we seek a cleaner and more efficient energy system for the 21st century.
Besides, PG&E is a broken, disaster of a company that cannot even function in keeping power lines maintained. Giving them authority over the nuclear plant should never have happened. That said, there are plenty of innovative, experienced operators that would jump at the opportunity to take over the license to operate Diablo Canyon and provide clean, carbon-free, cheap energy to the people of California.
There are also plenty of operators in the nuclear space that would be willing to invest in California with modern nuclear technology that produces more efficient power, with less waste, lower cost and reduced risk to surrounding communities.
Wyoming said yes to one such project, backed by the Californian that previously launched the world into the internet age. With the Bill Gates-backed TerraPower plant, a state that found a past life exporting carbon-rich coal to the world could become entirely powered by clean, safe, carbon-free power in the next decade.
If California wants to similarly lead the world on carbon reduction and responsible energy production, we should say yes to nuclear as well.