Personally I am happy to see Diablo Canyon keep running. Building a new NPP can be crazy expensive and is likely to go over budget and out of schedule but once one is built it can keep humming...
Personally I am happy to see Diablo Canyon keep running.
Building a new NPP can be crazy expensive and is likely to go over budget and out of schedule but once one is built it can keep humming away for decades and is a source of carbon free energy that can keep the lights on in California.
I don't know how wise it is to operate a nuclear plant in a seismically active region, even if it's nominally built to withstand earthquake damage, but this source of energy is important to the...
I don't know how wise it is to operate a nuclear plant in a seismically active region, even if it's nominally built to withstand earthquake damage, but this source of energy is important to the transition away from fossil fuels. Supposed "Friends of the Earth" and other anti-nuclear environmental organizations miss the point that a nuclear-free energy system is one that necessarily relies on fossil fuels to stabilize inconsistent renewable energy output.
Even with a pretty robust network containing a mix of solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal, there are still production shortfalls in most regions unless we massively overbuild all four, which is not cost-effective. Solar and wind are relatively complementary, but the wind blows stronger during the day, not the night; hydro is unsuitable for many locations and is considerably damaging to river ecosystems; geothermal technology is promising but expensive and probably cannot cover more than 12% of US electricity by 2050; and some techniques involve fracking, risking earthquakes.
Solar and wind will continue to drop in price for the next decade at least, but there are some physical limits to how much energy you can derive from a photovoltaic panel as well as practical limitations on how big wind turbines can be built. While they are great technologies, for the next 25 years (at least) nuclear is going to be an important part of the energy mix.
In a seismically active region you build structures to withstand an earthquake. All over California you see little plaques by entrance of older buildings that announce the buildings are out of...
In a seismically active region you build structures to withstand an earthquake. All over California you see little plaques by entrance of older buildings that announce the buildings are out of spec. Diablo Canyon doesn’t have one of those plaques.
In principle you could supplement a renewable grid with storage, it seemed like science fiction 20 years ago, it is much closer today, but it is not a bird in the hand whereas Diablo canyon is. If you had to build a new nuclear plant it might take 10 years like Vogtle 3 and 4 or might fail but Diablo is right here right now and the bugs are worked out.
10 years ago climate change was barely on the radar but one clear thing today is that California will need more clean energy and not less, since they will be adding electric cars, replacing natural gas in HVAC and appliances, and replacing industrial processes that produce CO2 with hydrogen, gas turbines that run backwards, electrolysis and similar techniques. Adaptation to climate change will mean more air conditioning and possibly more desalination. So the need for clean energy is basically bottomless and “all of the above” is the answer.
Climate change was most definitely on the radar 10 years ago. It's been known for like 100 years and been on the radar since the 50s. https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/...
Climate change was most definitely on the radar 10 years ago. It's been known for like 100 years and been on the radar since the 50s.
It was known but you did not see governments, NGOs and corporations making “net zero” commitments the way they are now. I was concerned about it and involved in a small local activist group about...
It was known but you did not see governments, NGOs and corporations making “net zero” commitments the way they are now.
I was concerned about it and involved in a small local activist group about 20 years ago and it terms of solutions we were talking then about things that are being seriously tried at small scales now.
Specifically FOEs justification for shutting down Diablo assumes that electricity usage in CA was going to continue to decline when it did not. For years PG&E was a world leader in conservation and trading “negawatts” for “megawatts” but in the age where “net zero” is on the agenda (which it just was not 10 years ago) that is long gone.
https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/remembering-george-h.w.-bush-the-environmental-president https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_policy_of_the_United_States I'm not saying they did as much...
I think G. H. W. Bush was underrated in some ways. I remember when Rodney King was beaten terribly by the LAPD and it was caught on tape he went on TV and said he watched the video with his wife...
I think G. H. W. Bush was underrated in some ways. I remember when Rodney King was beaten terribly by the LAPD and it was caught on tape he went on TV and said he watched the video with his wife and he was shocked. Today I think some Republicans would say something like “it served him right.”
Reagan, like Margaret Thatcher, represented a shift to the right, but you still had Tip O’Neil as Speaker of the House, I was a kid at the time but it seemed when a strong conservative and a strong liberal had to compromise over everything you got good results and thus we were still getting new clean air acts, the Americans with Disability act, etc.
Clinton, like Tony Blair, mostly agreed with Reagan about a lot of things, it was like how Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford agreed with FDR about the new deal. The thing was we had nasty Newt Gingrich as the speaker and I don’t mean “nasty” as an epithet, that was just how he rolled. So that move to the right was completed under Clinton and with his “triangulation” we did not have legislative progress on the environment or many issues that mattered to me.
I’m curious about this apparent agreement signed between the plant operator and the “friends of the earth.” What would the consideration given to the plant operator possibly be? Edit: aha...
I’m curious about this apparent agreement signed between the plant operator and the “friends of the earth.” What would the consideration given to the plant operator possibly be?
In 2016, Friends of the Earth entered into a contract with PG&E to retire Diablo Canyon. This was in exchange for Friends of the Earth dropping a separate legal challenge over environmental and public safety concerns associated with the power plant’s continued operations. Diablo Canyon – California’s last remaining nuclear plant – is located in San Luis Obispo near at least three seismic fault lines, which puts the entire state at risk of a devastating accident. It also operates on an outdated cooling system that puts marine life and water quality at significant risk of harm.
FOE has fought Diablo Canyon in the courts for the longest time, the main point of that contract was that FOE would drop the lawsuit, I think they managed to get California to kick in some funds...
FOE has fought Diablo Canyon in the courts for the longest time, the main point of that contract was that FOE would drop the lawsuit, I think they managed to get California to kick in some funds to help out the workers after the shutdown.
Thanks to the pressure put on Diablo Canyon plus waves of upgrades to NPP throughout the US after incidents such as Three-Mile Island, the 9/11 attack, and Fukushima, Diablo has been improved in numerous ways, specifically, it has been reinforced against a larger earthquake than it was originally designed for. As for the thermal problems, there are several fossil fuel power plants that use a similar cooling system that pose even larger dangers to local sea life.
Do you live near the power plant? I did. Close enough to get emergency alert text message warnings after earthquakes. Didn't particularly put me or my family at ease. Does this mean it should not...
Do you live near the power plant? I did. Close enough to get emergency alert text message warnings after earthquakes. Didn't particularly put me or my family at ease.
As for the thermal problems, there are several fossil fuel power plants that use a similar cooling system that pose even larger dangers to local sea life.
California has all kinds of warning signs. Lots of old buildings have plaques telling you they aren’t safe in an earthquake. Even in New York bags of snacks at the asian grocery store have cancer...
California has all kinds of warning signs. Lots of old buildings have plaques telling you they aren’t safe in an earthquake. Even in New York bags of snacks at the asian grocery store have cancer warning stickers mandated by California because of this problem
which is not some weird new thing but a ubiquitous problem with common methods of food preparation for both traditional and “highly processed” foods. Look close and you’ll find every land use has local impacts on wildlife. People say I shouldn’t let my cats go outside and maybe they are right, sometimes it seems snakes on my farm take down more unwanted rodents than my cats while I never see snakes take down a bird.
Personally I am happy to see Diablo Canyon keep running.
Building a new NPP can be crazy expensive and is likely to go over budget and out of schedule but once one is built it can keep humming away for decades and is a source of carbon free energy that can keep the lights on in California.
I don't know how wise it is to operate a nuclear plant in a seismically active region, even if it's nominally built to withstand earthquake damage, but this source of energy is important to the transition away from fossil fuels. Supposed "Friends of the Earth" and other anti-nuclear environmental organizations miss the point that a nuclear-free energy system is one that necessarily relies on fossil fuels to stabilize inconsistent renewable energy output.
Even with a pretty robust network containing a mix of solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal, there are still production shortfalls in most regions unless we massively overbuild all four, which is not cost-effective. Solar and wind are relatively complementary, but the wind blows stronger during the day, not the night; hydro is unsuitable for many locations and is considerably damaging to river ecosystems; geothermal technology is promising but expensive and probably cannot cover more than 12% of US electricity by 2050; and some techniques involve fracking, risking earthquakes.
Solar and wind will continue to drop in price for the next decade at least, but there are some physical limits to how much energy you can derive from a photovoltaic panel as well as practical limitations on how big wind turbines can be built. While they are great technologies, for the next 25 years (at least) nuclear is going to be an important part of the energy mix.
In a seismically active region you build structures to withstand an earthquake. All over California you see little plaques by entrance of older buildings that announce the buildings are out of spec. Diablo Canyon doesn’t have one of those plaques.
In principle you could supplement a renewable grid with storage, it seemed like science fiction 20 years ago, it is much closer today, but it is not a bird in the hand whereas Diablo canyon is. If you had to build a new nuclear plant it might take 10 years like Vogtle 3 and 4 or might fail but Diablo is right here right now and the bugs are worked out.
10 years ago climate change was barely on the radar but one clear thing today is that California will need more clean energy and not less, since they will be adding electric cars, replacing natural gas in HVAC and appliances, and replacing industrial processes that produce CO2 with hydrogen, gas turbines that run backwards, electrolysis and similar techniques. Adaptation to climate change will mean more air conditioning and possibly more desalination. So the need for clean energy is basically bottomless and “all of the above” is the answer.
Climate change was most definitely on the radar 10 years ago. It's been known for like 100 years and been on the radar since the 50s.
https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
https://www.livescience.com/humans-first-warned-about-climate-change
It was known but you did not see governments, NGOs and corporations making “net zero” commitments the way they are now.
I was concerned about it and involved in a small local activist group about 20 years ago and it terms of solutions we were talking then about things that are being seriously tried at small scales now.
Specifically FOEs justification for shutting down Diablo assumes that electricity usage in CA was going to continue to decline when it did not. For years PG&E was a world leader in conservation and trading “negawatts” for “megawatts” but in the age where “net zero” is on the agenda (which it just was not 10 years ago) that is long gone.
https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/remembering-george-h.w.-bush-the-environmental-president
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_policy_of_the_United_States
I'm not saying they did as much as they should have, but they did do some stuff, it was on the radar.
I think G. H. W. Bush was underrated in some ways. I remember when Rodney King was beaten terribly by the LAPD and it was caught on tape he went on TV and said he watched the video with his wife and he was shocked. Today I think some Republicans would say something like “it served him right.”
Reagan, like Margaret Thatcher, represented a shift to the right, but you still had Tip O’Neil as Speaker of the House, I was a kid at the time but it seemed when a strong conservative and a strong liberal had to compromise over everything you got good results and thus we were still getting new clean air acts, the Americans with Disability act, etc.
Clinton, like Tony Blair, mostly agreed with Reagan about a lot of things, it was like how Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford agreed with FDR about the new deal. The thing was we had nasty Newt Gingrich as the speaker and I don’t mean “nasty” as an epithet, that was just how he rolled. So that move to the right was completed under Clinton and with his “triangulation” we did not have legislative progress on the environment or many issues that mattered to me.
I’m curious about this apparent agreement signed between the plant operator and the “friends of the earth.” What would the consideration given to the plant operator possibly be?
Edit: aha https://foe.org/news/pge-extension-diablo-canyon/
FOE has fought Diablo Canyon in the courts for the longest time, the main point of that contract was that FOE would drop the lawsuit, I think they managed to get California to kick in some funds to help out the workers after the shutdown.
Thanks to the pressure put on Diablo Canyon plus waves of upgrades to NPP throughout the US after incidents such as Three-Mile Island, the 9/11 attack, and Fukushima, Diablo has been improved in numerous ways, specifically, it has been reinforced against a larger earthquake than it was originally designed for. As for the thermal problems, there are several fossil fuel power plants that use a similar cooling system that pose even larger dangers to local sea life.
Do you live near the power plant? I did. Close enough to get emergency alert text message warnings after earthquakes. Didn't particularly put me or my family at ease.
Does this mean it should not be addressed?
California has all kinds of warning signs. Lots of old buildings have plaques telling you they aren’t safe in an earthquake. Even in New York bags of snacks at the asian grocery store have cancer warning stickers mandated by California because of this problem
https://www.fda.gov/food/process-contaminants-food/acrylamide-questions-and-answers
which is not some weird new thing but a ubiquitous problem with common methods of food preparation for both traditional and “highly processed” foods. Look close and you’ll find every land use has local impacts on wildlife. People say I shouldn’t let my cats go outside and maybe they are right, sometimes it seems snakes on my farm take down more unwanted rodents than my cats while I never see snakes take down a bird.