It wasn’t too many years ago that activists on the Central Coast and elsewhere were demanding that all nuclear power plants in California be shut down and that no more be built.
At nearby Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo County there were numerous protests, sometimes turning violent, and hundreds of police officers from all over the region were deployed to keep the plant secure from poorly informed, but highly agitated protesters.
The demand that the plants be shut down was satisfied when the plants reached the end of their permitted existence, and renewals were either denied or the cost to bring them up to date was too excessive for their owners.
Now Pacific Gas and Electric is in the process of decommissioning (shutting down) Diablo Canyon, which is the last nuclear power plant in the state. The final turn-off will be in 2025, primarily because it has reached the end of its engineering life span, and because it would take tens of millions of dollars and several years of hard work to refurbish the plant and obtain a new license to operate.
Noozhawk recently reported that “PG&E, which owns Diablo Canyon, announced plans to shutter the plant in 2016 once the licenses for its reactors expire in 2024 and 2025, as part of an agreement between labor unions, environmental groups and nuclear stakeholders.”
Once again, we see that unions and environmentalists seem to run this state and it has had a disastrous impact.
In a state that is power hungry it means that taking the plant offline will create a power shortage that can’t be easily replaced. Planning for the loss of this and all the other plants should have been begun decades ago, but California politicians only think in election cycles, and always react to the loudest complainers when making decisions.
Political leaders knew or at least should have known for the last six years that a day of reckoning was coming. But they had no plan unless you think solar/wind power will make up the losses.
Of course, on the world stage that idea has been proven to be a joke. An example is Germany where they eliminated the use of fossil fuel a few years ago; now they are reopening and rebuilding many of the fossil-fuel and nuclear-powered plants to acquire a more reliable power source.
The current administration in Washington recently awakened to the fact that the U.S. power grid is in trouble; the Associated Press reports: “The Biden administration is launching a $6 billion effort to rescue nuclear power plants at risk of closing, citing the need to continue nuclear energy as a carbon-free source of power that helps to combat climate change.”
As usual; it’s too little and too late.
Many of us have realized for decades that the generation of power from a source that emitted no smoke was a good idea; the added benefit was that nuclear power was very reliable. But the activists had their demands satisfied by vote-hungry politicians — no more plants would be built.
Even if they started the rescue of Diablo Canyon tomorrow, it would take years to refurbish the plant, apply for and acquire a new permit. And, during the process the plant will likely be shut down while construction takes place.
Now the activists have shifted their priorities as a new batch of equally misinformed people have demanded and succeeded at persuading politicians to eliminate the use of fossil fuels as a source of power. This is especially true in Santa Barbara County where hard-core environmentalists, who are strongly supported by the idle rich in the South County, have almost eliminated oil production in our county.
Elected officials are supposed to keep the lights turned on and the gears of the economic engine turning, so relying on unions and environmentalists to do the thinking for them reeks of political incompetence.
If we keep electing the same political party to make these decisions, how could we expect a different result? You may want to keep this in mind as you vote in a couple of weeks.
— Ron Fink, a Lompoc resident since 1975, is retired from the aerospace industry. He has been following Lompoc politics since 1992, and after serving for 23 years appointed to various Lompoc commissions, retired from public service. The opinions expressed are his own.
