Newsom proposes extending nuclear plant’s life
LOS ANGELES — California Gov. Gavin Newsom, on Friday, proposed extending the life of the state’s last operating nuclear power plant by five to 10 years to maintain reliable power supplies in the climate change era.
The proposal to keep the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant running beyond a scheduled closing, by 2025, gave new urgency to a decades-long fight over the seismic safety of the site. And critics depicted Newsom’s plan as a huge financial giveaway for plant operator Pacific Gas & Electric, while warning it would gut state environmental safeguards.
Newsom’s draft proposal includes a potential forgivable loan for PG&E for up to $1.4 billion and would require state agencies to act quickly to clear the way for the reactors to continue running.
The seaside plant midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco produces 9% of the state’s electricity. The proposal says its continued operation beyond 2025 is “critical to ensure statewide energy system reliability” as climate change stresses the energy system.
“The governor has been clear for months about the potential need to extend the life of Diablo Canyon,” Newsom spokesman Anthony York said.
He added that Newsom has stressed the need to keep all options on the table to maintain reliable power and that “this proposal reflects the continued need to keep that flexibility.”
Newsom’s proposal amounts to an attempt to unspool a complex 2016 agreement among environmentalists, plant worker unions and the utility to close the plant, by 2025. The joint decision also was endorsed by California utility regulators, the Legislature and then-Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown.
Environmental groups depicted the move as a “dangerous” betrayal of the 2016 pact.
“Legislators should reject it out of hand,” said a joint statement from Friends of the Earth, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environment California.
Ralph Cavanagh of the Natural Resources Defense Council said the plan would provide sweeping exemptions from environmental rules, including the California Environmental Quality Act.
“This draft was prepared by someone with little understanding of California energy policy or history,” Cavanagh said.
David Weisman, legislative director of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility advocacy group said Newsom’s blueprint would “give PG&E over $1 billion in loans at below the interest rate even state agencies charge among themselves, and it’s completely forgivable.”
PG&E’s service area is concentrated in Northern California and Weisman asked: “What are taxpayers in Southern California getting out of this?”
The draft proposal was released ahead of a California Energy Commission meeting on the state’s energy needs and the role that the nuclear plant could play in maintaining reliable service.
Newsom clearly wants to avoid a repeat of August 2020, when a record heat wave caused a surge in power use for air conditioning that overtaxed California’s electrical grid. That caused two consecutive nights of rolling blackouts for the state, affecting hundreds of thousands of residential and business customers.
The Newsom administration is pushing to expand clean energy, as the state aims to cut emissions by 40% below 1990 levels, by 2030. Nuclear power doesn’t produce carbon pollution like fossil fuels, but leaves behind waste that can remain dangerously radioactive for centuries.