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California Will Close Its Last Nuclear Power Plant (sfchronicle.com)

An anonymous reader quotes the San Francisco Chronicle: California's last nuclear power plant -- Diablo Canyon, whose contentious birth helped shape the modern environmental movement -- will close in 2025, state utility regulators decided Thursday. The unanimous vote by the California Public Utilities Commission will likely bring an end to nuclear energy's long history in the state. State law forbids building more nuclear plants in California until the federal government creates a long-term solution for dealing with their waste, a goal that remains elusive despite decades of effort.

The decision comes even as California expands its fight against global warming. Owned by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., Diablo Canyon is the state's largest power plant, supplying 9 percent of California's electricity while producing no greenhouse gases. "With this decision, we chart a new energy future by phasing out nuclear power here in California," said commission President Michael Picker. "We've looked hard at all the arguments, and we agree the time has come."

19 of 368 comments (clear)

  1. YAY for coal? by CaptainDork · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Do we have any rails coming in from West Virginia?

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    1. Re:YAY for coal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      California does not have any coal fired power plants.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    2. Re:YAY for coal? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Informative

      No new coal plants are under construction or planned anywhere in America.

      California energy will come from gas, wind, and solar, with a tiny contribution from geothermal.

    3. Re:YAY for coal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually, California energy will come from Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon.

      "The problems always easier to solve when it's given to someone else."

    4. Re:YAY for coal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No new coal plants are under construction or planned anywhere in America.

      California energy will come from gas, wind, and solar, with a tiny contribution from geothermal.

      Ah, so they have seven short years to figure out how they're going to generate 9% of California's electrical demand from gas, wind, and solar, while also dealing with growth and more demand between now and 2025?

      Yeah, good luck with that shit. This touchy-feely story is about as realistic as California balancing their budget. That power plant will get shut down alright; when it melts down.

    5. Re:YAY for coal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yeah, they get a lot power from the US's largest nuclear plant in AZ.

    6. Re:YAY for coal? by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And CA doesn't get the power it needs.

      I don't think you get the dynamics here of supply and demand here. CA needs the power, the other states have the power.

      A similar situation exists for cars. California sets standards for itself, and tells the manufacturers that it will not allow them to sell them in Cali if they don't meet those standards. So whenever possible, the automakers produce vehicles to the Cali standards because they don't want to have to make two versions.

      So if California gives purchase preference to NatGas produced electricity, it serves as an incentive to switch to NatGas.

      Nothing is stopping an outfit from sticking to their guns and remaining on coal. But the goal isn't coal, the goal is selling electrical power. About the only way to work that system in favor of coal is to radically reduce the selling price.

      In other words, lowering the supply price to increase the demand for it.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    7. Re:YAY for coal? by dwillden · · Score: 4, Informative

      And those surrounding states (or more specifically the power plants built in them to service the CA demand) need the power they produce to be purchased by CA or the plants shut down and people lose their jobs. It's not just a matter of oh let's sell it to someone else. Usually they can't just send the power elsewhere.

      Utah has one Large power plant I'm familiar with that produces exclusively for the CA markets, the Intermountain Power Plant (IPP). The high voltage transmission lines from the plant run to CA and nowhere else. They were flat out told to convert it or else and the conversion is on schedule to be completed by 2025. The plant currently has two coal fired units, the plan over time is to eventually bring on two additional units, the third one was supposed to be running by now but that was halted when LA, (the planned destination for the power from the unit) voted to go coal free in 2012.

      So yes CA the buyer is able to pressure the producers because more and more of their utilities are refusing to buy power produced by coal. When the plants are built and focused on supplying the CA markets, the Transmissions lines lead to the CA markets and other power plants already meet the needs of the state where they reside, then yes CA is able to dictate to the suppliers.

      Utah gets no power from the IPP.

      Meanwhile Utah's coal industry has been forced to go looking overseas for buyers of our very clean anthracite coal.

      --
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  2. Morons by sexconker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    California is run by morons.

  3. Re:Guess they were not serious about climate chang by plopez · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You sure about that? Germany's economy is larger than CA but using renewables they have more energy than they can use.

    --
    putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
  4. State regulators decided? by kwerle · · Score: 4, Informative

    Diablo canyon is down the road.

    I've got nothing against nuclear. I toured the plant last year or the year before. Super impressive.

    Anyway, it's my understanding that Diablo Canyon isn't being shut down by regulators so much as PG&E can't make a profit from it. Solar and Gas are too cheap for [heavily regulated] nuclear to be profitable.

    Here's the story from 18 months ago:
    http://beta.latimes.com/busine...

    News?

  5. Re:Are YOU sure about that? GR 35% from renewables by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 4, Informative

    The numbeds for power prices are wrong.
    I doubt anyone pays more than 25cents, on a remote north sea island, perhaps.
    I pay 18 cents, and could drop that perhaps to 18 or 14 if I was not to lazy to switch provider.
    The average is hardly above 22 cents.

    kW/h prices are hardly relevant anyway, relevant is the total amount you pay per month or the percentage of your income.
    And in that regard Germany is quite low. I pay 100Euro a month for electricity AND natural gas.

    --
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  6. Re:Are YOU sure about that? GR 35% from renewables by nierd · · Score: 5, Informative
    https://www.energy-charts.de/p...

    Looking at 2017 (expand the timeline to the year) - it sure does look like they export most of the time - with a few blips of import. Looking over other graphs I saw them import from France but on the *same* day they were exporting 10 times that amount to other countries - so end result.... a power grid working as designed to move power from one spot to another - that sometimes results in imports that wouldn't be needed if the country was in isolation?

  7. No problem by PPH · · Score: 5, Funny

    California can just outlaw air conditioning.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  8. Re:He's referring to now by divide+overflow · · Score: 4, Informative

    1. No, we aren't seeing blackouts in California due to a lack of power generation facilities. California has been quite proactive in planning its energy needs. The vast majority of blackouts in California are due to wildfires and weather events.

    2. The site you reference is from the Institute for Energy Research, an organization started by Enron’s public policy analysis director. It is an advocacy organization and a fossil fuels lobbying organization. It has an agenda.

  9. Re:Not really by blind+biker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Natural Gas is still a lot safer

    Natural gas plants leak methane like a motherfucker. And methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. After a few decades it decomposes into water and... CO2, but in the meantime it helps wrecking havoc of climate.

    I much prefer nuclear power to natural gas. It's safer for the planet.

    --
    "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
  10. Re:California is failing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Breitbart article has two links to the same census bureau report. The report is titled "Children of Foreign-Born Parents Generation More Likely to Be College-Educated Than Their Parents, Census Bureau Reports", and does not contain the info the Breitbart article says that it's citing. In fact, California isn't even mentioned in the report. Your other sources are not any more credible.

  11. Re:California is failing by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Informative

    If the Brietbart article links to the Census Bureau report, why didn't you link to the report directly? Let's click on it and see... Oh, it doesn't support the claim that 930k people left CA between the dates given in the Brietbart article!

    Wikipedia is a better source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    There are multiple sources in that data, and you can see that the population did not fall.

    Brietbart seems to have realized that it's easy for people to call bullshit on unsourced claims, so they started to throw in some sources that look authoritative but which don't actually support what they are saying. I guess their assumption is that most people won't bother to read the sources, they will just assume that they add credibility to the story.

    CA is dead last (50th out of 50) in economic freedom.

    Or put another way it has the best environmental and consumer protections.

    --
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    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  12. Re:Red states demand the most federal aid by davide+marney · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The red state vs. blue state comparison is flawed because there are no purely red or blue states. What there is instead are urban and rural parts of the country. Urban areas are deeply blue and rural is deeply red.

    To see the truth of this, just look at an election map by precinct for your state. Compare it to a map of urban vs. rural.

    To truly compare, you need to cut across geographical boundaries. The Pew Research Center did that by correlating political party to food stamp usage. Democrats are TWICE as likely as Republicans to have taken food stamps.

    Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

    This makes good common sense, too. Democrats in the urban core are obviously much more supportive of a large, active government, and Republicans in rural areas want smaller government.

    --
    "We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday