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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There is no reality in which nuclear is economically viable when solar, wind and hydro power as well as batteries exist, all with exponentially decreasing costs…
The answer is always the same: people wanting those juicy multi-billion subsidies and politicians paid by them and their lobbyists spend a lot of money (but not that much compared to the amount of taxes you can get with that grift) on desinformation and straight out brain-washing.
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.)
It is the only viable energy solution for space. Solar kind of works, but requires large, vulnerable panels, and loses effectiveness the further you get from the sun. Nuclear energy is the only viable energy source, we have to develop it.
Nuclear power is cheap and clean but sadly it is burdened by the public’s misunderstanding and fear of radiation.
Nuclear power is cheap
🤣
It is. It’s ridiculously cheap. It’s only the regulations and bureaucracy surrounding it that make it so expensive. It goes beyond safety and into unreasonable requirements spawned by decades of attempts to appease NIMBYS whos entire knowledge of “nuclear” is restricted bombs and Chernobyl. There are also the countless officials and agencies who created needless red tape to benefit themselves, or had a vested interest in seeing nuclear fail.
Let me be ABUNDANTLY clear: safety regulations and red tape ARE good. Holy shit, please do not think I am arguing against them wholesale. But regulations on nuclear plants go so far beyond what is actually needed that it balloons costs and time-frames to multitudes of what they should be.
It feels completely disingenuous to use those excess costs to argue that nuclear is expensive, because they are entirely our own fault that they’re there. It’s like saying running a mile is too painful, but then it turns out you shoot yourself in the leg every time before you try. The issue isn’t running the mile, it’s that you choose to shoot yourself in the leg. You shouldn’t be able to use that to argue against running a mile.
I will add context to your factual statement with the existence of regulations requiring safety systems to deal with what is called a Double Ended Guillotine break in the primary coolant line. In over 70 years, with reactors in 35 countries, there has never been a Double Ended Guillotine break in the primary coolant line, because it’s physically impossible. Pipes don’t break like that, they just can’t break like that.
The actual (still extremely rare) failure condition is called Leak Before Break.
The safety systems required to prevent the imaginary Double Ended Guillotine break cost millions of dollars per unit and actually make it harder to implement safety systems for Leak Before Break.
