Nuclear power's last chance in California?
June 05--Now there is one. The Diablo Canyon nuclear facility near San Luis Obispo is the only nuclear energy plant left in California. Approved in the late 1960s when public sentiment in California was starting to shift from embracing nuclear power to opposing it, Diablo Canyon generates almost 18,000 gigawatt-hours of power each year, powering 1.7 million homes. By itself, Diablo Canyon, operated by Pacific Gas & Electric, accounts for nearly 9 percent of in-state electricity production, all without emitting greenhouse gases at a time when California and the Obama administration have each made commitments to combat global warming. But its fate is uncertain. The license for the plant's first unit expires in 2024 and the second unit's license comes up in 2025. And while PG&E can apply for a 20-year extension through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the utility's officials have been coy about whether it will look for extensions. A shutdown would leave the state with no public utility-run nuclear power plants, another punch to an industry looking to keep its aging fleet intact while at the same time competing against subsidized solar and wind power and low-priced natural gas-fired facilities. For critics who have long insisted that nuclear power is inherently dangerous and too expensive, the prospect of delivering a death blow to Diablo is something to relish. "Two nuclear plants are down in California and we're working on a
third," said For nuclear's supporters, keeping Diablo Canyon online is essential to deliver reliable, base-load power and an effective way to reach the state's ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. "Diablo Canyon is an absolutely necessary part of the energy mix in
California," said It's not just California. There are 99 nuclear reactors in the U.S., providing 19 percent of the nation's electricity and almost 60 percent of carbon-free power. But the majority of those 99 plants are more than 30 years old. Two weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Energy sponsored what the agency called a summit meeting with politicians and nuclear officials to discuss ways to keep existing plants up and running. "We are supposed to be adding zero-carbon sources, not subtracting or
simply replacing by building to just kind of tread water," Energy
Secretary One month earlier, the International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants held its annual conference in San Francisco and even though nuclear energy, as a percentage of total electricity generation in the U.S., has been flat for going on 30 years, the mood was upbeat. "There is no other base-load energy provider besides nuclear that can
do what we do," said Nuclear's critics say they've heard that before. "They try to get people to take a look at them 'one more time' just about every other year," said Phillips. "We don't consider (nuclear power) as a clean source of energy." Nuclear down, natural gas up An increasing amount of the state's baseload power is going to the natural gas sector. Natural gas burns about two times cleaner than coal, but is still a fossil fuel, two-thirds of which is extracted in the U.S. by hydraulic fracturing. Just before the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station went offline, nuclear power accounted for 18.2 percent of California's in-state electricity power. It almost immediately dropped to less than 9 percent. The percentage of in-state generation from renewables has grown from 16.6 percent prior to the SONGS shutdown to 22.5 percent in 2014, which represents the latest data from the California Energy Commission. But in the same period, natural gas has grown even more -- from generating 45.4 percent of the state's electricity to 61.3 percent. "If we lose Diablo Canyon, we'll go to 71 percent natural gas" in
California electricity, said Shellenberger points to the massive natural gas leak at Aliso Canyon that forced out thousands of residents in the Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles County. "You don't have to be an expert in the electric utilities industry to know that a high level of dependence on a single fuel (natural gas) is a risky thing to do," Shellenberger said. Nuclear's critics say the solution is boosting the storage of renewable sources like wind and solar. The California Public Utilities Commission requires the state's big three investor-owned utilities to add 1.3 gigawatts of energy storage to their grids by the end of the decade. "The storage industry is just booming," said Phillips, adding that greater energy efficiency and conservation can replace nuclear. "You can get to a point where you don't need to create new, giant energy plants, new, big gas plants or new, big nuclear plants." Nuclear's cost conundrum Constructing a nuclear plant is an expensive proposition. So is upgrading existing plants to meet current regulations. For example, Diablo Canyon sucks in billions of gallons of seawater for its cooling system. Estimates to retrofit the plant to meet state rules implemented after Diablo Canyon was built range anywhere from $1.6 billion to $14 billion. "You cannot afford nuclear plants," said In Georgia, two brand new Westinghouse reactors being built at the Vogtle Generating Plant by Southern Co. were estimated to cost $14 billion. In regulatory filings last year, Southern Co. announced another round of construction delays that included cost increases of at least $720 million. By some estimates, Vogtle's final price tag could be $3 billion over budget and three years behind schedule. Kuczynski, who oversees the project for the Southern Co., bristled when asked about Vogtle, saying a number of factors, including loan guarantees that are part of the federal government's 2005 Energy Policy Act, will bring costs back down. "Whenever you build something brand new, first of its kind, you are going to have some startup challenges and that's exactly what the legislation was designed to do," Kuczynski said. "It's working perfectly." The industry is trying to blunt criticism about costs by pointing to the growing -- but still nascent -- sector that concentrates on small, modular reactors, or SMRs, that can be transported by truck or rail. It's estimated that the 300 megawatts generated by an SMR can power about 230,000 homes. However, SMRs across the country are still in the design phase. San Diego-based General Atomics has developed an advanced prototype called the Energy Multiplier Module that, instead of being a light-water reactor, uses helium. "One of the advantages to our reactor is that it has a much smaller
footprint," said "On paper that sounds like a good idea but what (we) want to know is how much does your good idea cost and who's going to pay for it," said Becker. Waste issues won't go away A nagging issue remains: what to do with spent fuel. With the federal government scrapping the proposed nuclear waste facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, spent fuel is being stored at various sites across the country on an indefinite basis. According to a state law passed in 1976, new nuclear plants in California can only be built if the California Energy Commission determines the federal government can sufficiently deal with reprocessing fuel rods and has found a permanent disposal site for high-level nuclear waste. On a practical level, the 1976 law has resulted in a moratorium on building nuclear plants in the state. No new facilities have been built in almost 40 years. Exemptions were made for existing plants but with Yucca Mountain off the table, sites like Diablo Canyon and San Onofre have had to keep their waste on site, prompting worries and protests. The decommissioned plant at Rancho Seco stores 22 metric tons of uranium, costing $5 million a year. "We may never be able to move these," said "These canisters could start leaking before you could even get it out
of here," said SONGS officials insist the waste is safely stored. "This is a proven
technology," said Climate targets In an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, California has established ambitious goals, including Senate Bill 350 that mandates 50 percent of the state's energy to come from renewable sources by 2030. In December, the Obama administration signed off on the Paris agreement on climate change, aimed at "holding the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 degrees" Celsius. Such developments, nuclear's proponents say, offer the industry an opportunity to highlight its clean air attributes. Earlier this year the American Nuclear Society rolled out a "Special Committee on Nuclear in the States," aimed at influencing state and local policymakers across the country. Part of the group's pitch is that while solar and wind energy is growing, they still have problems with intermittency -- that is, generating power when the sun is not shining or when the wind is not blowing. "Nuclear is clearly the best and only environmentally-friendly
baseload power," said But opponents say mining uranium on nuclear's front end comes at an environmental price and what to do with the spent fuel on the back end is an inherent problem. Who gets subsidized Wind and solar enjoy a good deal of public support in California and received a big boost on the national level last December when Congress passed an extension of the renewable tax credits. The federal government does not put nuclear power under the heading of "renewable energy." California, like virtually every other state in the U.S with renewable portfolio standards, excludes nuclear. "There's nothing renewable about the waste," said Becker. Industry critics also say nuclear has received plenty of money from ratepayers to get plants built in the first place. And the U.S. Department of Energy has already earmarked millions to help get the SMR sector up and running. Hoffman of the ANS committee said the nuclear industry should be subsidized to the same extent as wind and solar -- or have state governments and the feds do away with energy tax credits entirely. "We are causing our electricity market to be so flawed towards wind and solar that it's a negative to nuclear," Hoffman said. "If it's a level playing field, and that's all nuclear is asking for, we can be successful." An uphill battle At one time California was a pioneer when it came to nuclear power but now it's one of the toughest places for the industry to win support. In a 2011 poll of 950 registered voters in California by the Field Research Corporation, conducted less than three months after the Fukushima accident in Japan, 58 percent disagreed with the statement, "The building of more nuclear power plants should be allowed in California." While the deadline for renewing Unit 1 at Diablo Canyon is still eight years away, the stakes are so high that the pending battle for what could be nuclear's last stand in the Golden State figures to be an intense one. Shellenberger, who earlier this year founded Environmental Progress, a nonprofit that includes as one of its goals saving Diablo Canyon, said in an interview that "nuclear is going to have a hard time for the next 10 to 20 years." Shellenberger said his aim is to keep existing plants in California and other states open while encouraging foreign countries like China to keep breaking ground on new sites. "I think it's going to be a pretty gradual process." Promoting nuclear power, Phillips of the Sierra Club said, is "definitely a tough road to hoe, in California especially. Californians have figured that one out." What's at stake is whether the Golden State, which helped usher in the nuclear power era back in 1957 with a tiny, 5-megawatt reactor in Pleasanton, offers the industry a lifeline or a headstone. ___ (c)2016 The San Diego Union-Tribune Visit The San Diego Union-Tribune at www.sandiegouniontribune.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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