Sacramento Report: The Diablo’s in the Details

The California Coastal Commission is deciding next week how long Diablo Canyon, the state’s last nuclear power plant, can keep operating.

Pacific Gas & Electric, which owns the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, needs approval from the Coastal Commission to keep it running after it was scheduled to shut down this year. It’s one of the last permits needed to stay open after lawmakers approved it to continue operating until 2030.

Although situated 325 miles north of San Diego on the Central Coast, what happens within the plant’s concrete domes has implications for the Southern California metropolitan area, too.

Ahead of next week’s meeting, I wanted to get a better understanding of Diablo Canyon’s importance, the decades-long controversy that surrounds it, and what its continued operation means for ratepayers in San Diego.  

Why Lawmakers Are Talking About the Plant Now

Diablo Canyon is a 40-year-old power plant in Avila Beach that generates about 9 percent of the state’s total energy. Its towering concrete cylinders and highlighter-green control room simulator are a snapshot in time, largely unchanged from when the plant began operating. Plans to phase it out in 2025 commenced nearly a decade ago.

Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2022 authorized the plant to stay open past its scheduled closure this year after heat-related blackouts the year prior sparked concerns over the reliability of California’s power grid.

Lawmakers pushed through a $1.4 billion state loan to keep it open, against the wishes of some Democrats skeptical of continuing to include nuclear power in the state’s portfolio of clean energy.

The Plant Remains Controversial Despite Growing Popularity of Nuclear Energy

The plant has been marred by controversy since it began operating off the San Luis Obispo coast in 1985. Advocacy groups such as Mothers for Peace have scrutinized its two nuclear reactors for decades over concerns about its waste, which remains radioactive for centuries.

Critics also point to the 2.5 billions of gallons of sea water it pulls in from the Pacific Ocean each day to cool its systems, its damage to marine life, and crisscrossing earthquake fault lines near its reactors as other dangers.

PG&E has maintained the plant is safe to operate and produces little carbon pollution, something proponents of nuclear energy and policymakers have largely embraced as the need for energy continues to grow statewide and nuclear reactors become a more attractive option.

Costs to Keep the PG&E Plant Open Are Hitting Ratepayers’ Pocketbooks, Including in San Diego

How the operators will afford to keep the plant running has been a questionever since lawmakers approved the $1.4 billion loan to keep it open for the next five years, which was to be paid back through federal loans and, if those didn’t fully materialize, profits generated from 2029 to 2030.

As much as $588 million is unlikely to come in, due to insufficient federal funding and projected profits, a report by CalMatters found.

Last year, the California Public Utilities Commission approved $722 million in ratepayer funds to go toward the plant’s operating costs this year. Those rate hikes were spread across customers of all the major investor-owned companies for the first time in history, including Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, because its power helps offset costs for all customers, PG&E said at the time.

That meant SDG&E customers paid $2 a month on average this year to help fund the plant, according to reporting from the San Francisco Chronicle.

The legislation to keep Diablo Canyon open, SB 846, allowed PG&E to do this because it’s seen as an asset to everyone in the state. PG&E has forecast it will cost SDG&E customers $12.6 million in 2026.

This is in addition to rising electricity bills for Californians, which are already among the highest in the country.

Nuclear energy critics and consumer advocates say that burdening ratepayers to fund Diablo Canyon and its environmental impacts are reasons to demand certain conservation requirements from the company to move forward with the permitting process.

The Coastal Commission Is Requiring PG&E to Conserve Land Around the Plant to Keep Operating

Last month, commission staff recommended that 1,100 of the 12,000 acres owned by the company at the site be set aside for conservation and public access to compensate for the estimated 2.5 billion larval fish the plant damages each year.

They also recommended increasing the acreage amount from 1,100 to 3,300 if the plant is approved to operate past 2030, which PG&E is seeking to do with federal regulators.

Commissioners took issue with the staff’s recommendation, wanting more concessions from the company to conserve a larger portion of the Diablo Canyon lands before giving the OK.

This is what the Dec. 11 hearing will be about, and commissioners are expected to approve the permit.

Sen. John Laird and Assemblymember Dawn Addis, both Democrats, wrote a letter to the commission ahead of its November meeting urging them to require PG&E to conserve more land because there was no guarantee that the state would allow the plant to continue running past 2030.

“We are not attempting to reject this permit application to extend Diablo Canyon’s operation until 2030,” Laird said in a statement after the November meeting. “The issue before the commission is rather how much of the Diablo Canyon lands to protect.”

What I’m Reading Now

• UC San Diego says one in eight of its students is struggling with remedial math, KPBS reports.
• Republican Rep. Darrell Issa says he’s no longer considering a congressional run in Texas, explained by The San Diego Union Tribune.
• Oh, you didn’t know? Imported flowers are out, homegrown flowers are in. At least among Gen Z and millennials, the Associated Press writes.

Thanks for reading this week’s Sacramento Report! Please reach me at nadia@voiceofsandiego.org for tips or any interesting tidbits.

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