The Diablo Canyon Power Plant, which sits on a cliff on California’s Central Coast, has been the subject of ceaseless protests and political battles since it was proposed in 1963.
Now, the plant is at the center of yet another major debate. After shuttering all the state’s other nuclear power plants in recent decades, California is considering extending Diablo’s life and lifting a moratorium on new reactors.
That these decisions are even on the table in California is a testament to the substantial change in public views of nuclear energy, which for decades has been reviled by the liberal lawmakers and environmental groups that wield tremendous power and influence in the state.
Many of its leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, have expressed support for nuclear energy. The California Legislature last month passed a bill to commission a study on partly lifting the ban on new reactors.
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No disagreement with the first part, but I feel like shitting on nuclear, especially when it’s already built and generating power like the Diablo Canyon facility that’s the subject of the article, could be pushing that capacity to other non-renewables. If the question is whether to use X dollars to build renewable capacity or nuclear capacity, i fully agree to always go with the renewable, but if we can have more of a “yes, and” sort of approach that also replaces coal/oil/gas capacity with nuclear, i like the idea of replacing some of the world burning fuels with nuclear.
Oh, I totally agree with the sentiment of using already build nuclear power plants in the meantime to speed up decarbonisation.
But long-term nuclear and renewables just don’t go along well. Renewables need short-term storage (about the amount to shift production peak at noon to demand peak in the early evening) and seasonal long-term storage. Nuclear with it’s constant production (because dialing production down temporarily doesn’t save money making an already expensive producer even more so) can replace some of need for short-term storage. That’s it. And it’s much too expensive to compete batteries.
(If you want details: RTE, the French grind provider, did an extensive study about the future of nuclear and it’s economical perspective compared with renewables in lat 2021. With lots of scenarios modelled for comparison. Long story short: You don’t beat renewables plus storage. The niche nuclear can work in (and that really that’s more from an “we have nuclear, we want nuclear, how do we make it work”-perspective) is in a renewable system with power-to-gas and peak burners as a long-term storage concept where it makes electrolysis much more economical because it does not only run when there is access renewable power produced but also through the night when nuclear still produces without much demand.)