As the California Coastal Commission agreed this month to keep the state’s last nuclear energy plant open for at least five more years, the Trump administration announced federal funding for the development of small modular nuclear reactors. [some emphasis, links added]
The Diablo Canyon Power Plant in San Luis Obispo, the only remaining nuclear energy facility in the state, was saved this month from imminent death when the Coastal Commission voted to issue the permit the plant needs to obtain a federal license to operate for another 20 years.
The twin-reactor site has been providing safe, clean, and reliable electrical power for four decades.
Nationally, the Tennessee Valley Authority and Holtec Government Services in Michigan were chosen to develop light-water small modular reactor projects. Each will receive up to $400 million in federal cost-shared funding.
Champions of limited government will dispute the federal government’s involvement rather than allowing the market to make that choice.
They should. It’s a legitimate gripe.
However, $800 million is a small amount of private capital to be invested in nuclear power once public policy clears the way for the marketplace.
The government has picked nuclear energy to be a loser for decades, suppressing its growth with regulatory and licensing hurdles, and even state-level bans on new plant construction (including California’s almost half-century-old [de facto] moratorium).
The number of domestic nuclear reactors peaked at 112, but now there are only about 90, says the Energy Information Administration, and 23 are decommissioning as of August.
Maybe it’s time to make up for the penalties imposed without justification on nuclear power?
California has been at the forefront of banning nuclear power, but some lawmakers have been considering rolling back the ban so the state can meet its clean energy goals.
A bill was introduced earlier this year to exempt small modular reactors – the same technology that the administration is betting on – from the nuclear ban.
A system powered solely by solar, wind, and hydro isn’t an engineering strategy; it’s a belief system.
Nuclear-friendly bills proposed in 2022 and 2024 also intended to accelerate the development of small modular reactors.
That none of the three has become law is discouraging, since the state needs to avail itself of nuclear options if it’s to meet its green energy targets and avoid weekly rolling blackouts, Leonard Rodberg recently wrote in CalMatters.
“A system powered solely by solar, wind, and hydro isn’t an engineering strategy; it’s a belief system. Zealotry and energy reliability don’t mix,” says Rodberg, a Queens College urban studies professor emeritus.
Even in 2050, five years after California is to have achieved “carbon neutrality” in power generation, Rodberg says there will still be “extended periods throughout the year when the renewables” will fail to meet the load demand.
“In fact, there are 52 days during the year when significant amounts of gas have to be burned to avoid system failure.”
If natural gas is banned, then nuclear will have to make up the shortage. It can take 10 to 12 years to add new nuclear capacity, from the planning and licensing phase to completion of construction.
We should add a few years, with this being California, where all construction projects become slogs. It is unachievable to build a 90% clean power grid by 2035, replacing fossil fuel generation with nuclear.
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I once read an article that concluded if California had put as much money into nuclear power as they have wind and solar, the state would have energy independence. That is also true of Germany. Nuclear power runs 24/7 with no carbon dioxide emission. There is slight down time for maintenance.
Every state in the US that has declared they will not be using fossil fuels to generate electricity need nuclear power. That’s the only way to achieve this ridiculous goal. And yet many of these blue states have shut down fully functional nuclear plants because the same groups who want to close coal plants also hate nukes. This also happened in Germany but because the Germans don’t have natural gas in the way we have in the US they had to restart coal plants instead of restarting their nuclear plants.