Why California Is Reconsidering Its Decision to Shun Nuclear Power (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 2 days ago by Corvidae@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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The Diablo Canyon Power Plant, which sits on a cliff on California’s Central Coast, has been the subject of ceaseless protests and political battles since it was proposed in 1963.

Now, the plant is at the center of yet another major debate. After shuttering all the state’s other nuclear power plants in recent decades, California is considering extending Diablo’s life and lifting a moratorium on new reactors.

That these decisions are even on the table in California is a testament to the substantial change in public views of nuclear energy, which for decades has been reviled by the liberal lawmakers and environmental groups that wield tremendous power and influence in the state.

Many of its leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, have expressed support for nuclear energy. The California Legislature last month passed a bill to commission a study on partly lifting the ban on new reactors.

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[-] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

This one goes into pretty good detail about the challenges in CA in particular:

https://energy.mit.edu/news/decarbonizing-the-u-s-power-grid/

But at 50 grams of CO2 per kWh, the ban on nuclear makes a significant difference. “Without nuclear, there’s about a 45% increase in total system size, which is really quite substantial,” says Farnsworth. “It’s a vastly different system, and it’s more expensive.” Indeed, the cost of electricity would increase by 7%.

Going one step further, the researchers performed an analysis to determine the most decarbonized system possible in California. Without nuclear, the state could reach 40 grams of CO2 per kWh. “But when you allow for nuclear, you can get all the way down to 16 grams of CO2 per kWh,” says Farnsworth. “We found that California needs nuclear more than any other region due to its poor wind resources.”

TL;DR you can do it with batteries it just costs more, and getting consumers to accept higher electricity prices in order to protect the environment is already going to be a tough sell politically. Of course, so is nuclear, so I do support continued efforts into some more novel sources of baseline power such as floating offshore wind and advanced geothermal. However, these are not ready to be implemented at scale today and the federal government is currently making offshore wind nearly impossible to construct. So I don't know. There aren't any easy answers, unfortunately, but we have to hope either the political or technological landscape changes somehow to make deep decarbonization possible.

[-] Ooops@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago

I will read the whole thing once I get more time later. But if your excerpt is the main argument, then it's very telling that they speak about costs of batteries and how that's a tough sell, then switch to potentials for decarbonisation for nuclear without talking about the costs there.

this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2026

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