Under its current Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses, Diablo Canyon Unit 1’s operating license expires November 2, 2024, and Unit 2’s on August 26, 2025.
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PG&E officials said a major factor in making the decision to shutter Diablo Canyon was California’s changing energy landscape and a state policy requiring utilities to increase renewable energies to 50 percent by 2030.
Currently, the plant produces about 20 percent of the power used by PG&E customers in Northern and Central California, equaling about 9 percent of the state’s total energy output, according to news accounts. In the process, PG&E has avoided what promised to be a long and hard-fought battle over any extension of its license due to new information about major quake faults near the plant, including one less than a half mile offshore.
The parties to the Joint Proposal are PG&E, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1245, Coalition of California Utility Employees, Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council, Environment California and Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility. He had pushed to keep Diablo Canyon running to serve some 1.7 million homes. The report, known as Plan B, provided a detailed analysis of how power from the Diablo Canyon reactors could be replaced with renewable, efficiency and energy storage resources which would be both less expensive and greenhouse gas free.
Diablo Canyon now provides around 20 percent of electricity in PG&E’s service territory.
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There are now about 1,483 Central Coast residents who are employed at Diablo Canyon.
The plan to replace nuclear reactors with efficiency gains and renewable power puts PG&E at the forefront of that global transition.
PG&E says it will immediately cease any efforts on its part to renew the Diablo Canyon operating licenses and will ask the NRC to suspend consideration of the pending Diablo Canyon license renewal application. The utility says it will replace the electricity from the reactors with green energy, but this will likely prove to be an enormous technical challenge.
PG&E’s decision to pull the plug on its aging Diablo Canyon facility on the California coast comes amid broader challenges facing the US nuclear power industry.
Yes, a deal reached among the plant’s operator, labor unions and a few environmental groups stipulates that greater energy efficiency and more renewable power – solar, wind and the like – will pick up the slack. Advocates of closing the plants are hoping the changeover could spur even further investment in renewable energy. “The plant now provides 8 percent of California’s electricity and over 20 percent of its low-carbon electricity, the loss will most certainly be made up of increased natural gas burning or increased imports from out-of-state”.
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Voicing his support for the plan, California lieutenant governor Gavin Newsom, said: “The idea that the economics- from PG&E’s perspective-work for renewables is a pretty profound moment in energy policy”.
