By Andrew Christie, Chapter Director
As the drought bites down harder, several folks hereabouts have advanced the notion of a desalination plant co-located with California’s last remaining nuclear power plant, the ideal source for the enormous quantity of energy that desalination requires.
Mr. Tony Armini is the latest to float this notion, in a letter in the March 31 edition of the Tribune. The fly in Mr. Armini’s nuclear ointment: “I’m afraid the anti-nuclear activists may force us to shut down the last noncarbon-dioxide-emitting, safe nuclear plant in California….”
While the reality of Diablo Canyon is something activists have been pointing out for the last three decades, one must assume that by “anti-nuclear activists,” Mr. Armini meant to include in that category state regulatory agencies, reality, and the passage of time.
Here are the scenarios presented by encroaching reality:
The operating license for Diablo Canyon expires ten years from now and it shuts down.
Or, if PG&E applies for, and gets, a renewal of its operating license for Diablo Canyon – two increasingly big ifs -- the plant will operate for another twenty years beyond that. Then it will shut down.
Or PG&E will be required to attempt to render the plant seismically safe (as opposed to its customary practice of “pencil engineering,” rendering the plant seismically safe on paper, with an assist from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, by fudging safety standards), or the State Water Board may rule that continuing to suck billions of fish eggs and larvae into the plant’s cooling system to the great detriment of the marine environment is no longer to be allowed. If the utility finds the cost of the seismic safety and/or cooling water fix to be overly daunting, then Diablo doesn’t even have ten years.
There is no Door Number Four. There is no scenario in which Diablo makes it to the mid-century mark. Any way you cut it, anyone who plans to hitch a desal wagon to Diablo’s falling star should think up a new plan that doesn’t involve becoming dependent on a water source that is destined to be abruptly cut off. That other, better plan should include watershed management, conservation, low-impact development, rainwater harvesting, graywater systems, stormwater and urban runoff reduction, more efficient irrigation, recycling and reclamation. All less sexy than the supposed silver bullet of desal, but also about living within our means, non-destructive to the marine environment, and one-fifth the cost.
Bottom line: Reality is now catching up to Diablo because it is becoming too difficult for resource agencies and regulators to ignore. Even in the increasingly unlikely event of license renewal, Diablo is going away. And in any shutdown scenario, it will be the Pacific Gas & Electric Company and reality doing the shutting down.