Earthquake risks and rising costs: The price of operating California's last nuclear plant

[quaint]

LATimes

Amid coastal bluffs speckled with brush and buckwheat, Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant uses this energy to spin two massive copper coils at a blistering 30 revolutions per second. In 2022, these generators — about the size of school buses — produced 6% of Californians’ power and 11% of their non-fossil energy.

The core of the debate lives in the quaint coastal town of San Luis Obispo, just 12 miles inland from the concrete domes, where residents expected Diablo Canyon to shut down over the next year after its license expired.

Today, the plant is still buzzing with life: Nuclear fission, in the deep heart of the plant, continues to superheat water to 600 degrees at 150 times atmospheric pressure. Generators continue to whir with a haunting and deafening hum that reverberates throughout the massive turbine deck.

Earthquakes account for about 65% of the risk for a worst-case scenario meltdown. Potential internal fires at the plant make up another 18%. The last 17% is made up of everything from aircraft impacts and meteorites to sink holes and snow.

However, new studies are finding that energy storage is a feasible approach to grid reliability — and that even when adding the price of that infrastructure, solar still costs less than nuclear.

Much more at link.

Non-scientist here, why don't we build small reactors at the site, then shut down the old one?

[flying_wahini]

1. Non Scientist answer- smaller reactors would also be at risk -earthquakes are so prevalent maybe it's the area.

Solar sounds just as capable and is cleaner and cheaper in the long run.
I think the punchline was Diablo Canyon is getting more dangerous the longer it operates and California can’t shut it down till solar plants are ready and they aren’t there yet.

[quaint]

2. "I've read" here and there, that nuclear is the best option for large-scale replacement of fossil fuels, quickly.

But I know nothing.

[Auggie]

5. I've read/heard the same thing. Nuclear has to be part of the energy mix.

Just build them away from fault lines.

Another item I've read/heard is that we're basing safety assumptions for all plants on engineering and operations that's decades old. Tech is a lot better now.

I'm not a proponent of nuclear power, but I'm a realist. Less is better. And not on earthquake faults.

[CoopersDad]

3. We need both: Nuclear and Storage.

Never destroy a non fossil plant that's already running, it's irreplaceable.

Yes, deploy small modular reactors but couple them with storage, just as Diablo uses the Helms Pumped Hydro plant for storage.

Ask me anything, I've toured Diablo many times and may be out there again in October.

[quaint]

4. Our experience extending the life of and decommissioning SONGS has brought Diablo extension forefront.

Diablo is older and even more earthquake prone than San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, or so I've read.

Is it really safe to run after all these years? What about cracks? What about the impending Big One? Can you recommend reading (for old non-scientist) so I have answers when friends call me foolish for supporting nuclear energy? I don't support building more large-scale plants, especially in California, and small reactors are safer and faster to build, but I don't have knowledge to refute naysayers.

Thank you.

[CoopersDad]

6. SONGS, 1968, is quite a bit older than DCPP, 1985

Those are the two commissioning dates, construction of Diable began the same year that SONGS went online.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's estimate of the risk each year of an earthquake intense enough to cause core damage to the reactor at Diablo Canyon was 1 in 23,810, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant

I'd like to see it stay open until an equivalent generation capacity SMR fleet is dispatched.

I've visited a number of NGas plant, they use the same tubines and generators (basically) and are never in the pristine condition that Diablo presents. The place looks like it was built last week.

[quaint]

7. Thanks much.

[hunter]

8. The world is burning. How long are we going to pretend natural gas is harmless...

...because it supports our solar and wind fantasies?

If we shut down Diablo Canyon now it would be replaced with natural gas power plants that would still be dumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere forty years from now.

People keep claiming that solar and wind power "still costs less than nuclear" but that's a fucking lie. Creative accounting.

Wind and solar power are not economically viable without fossil fuels.

As it is, the actual cost of new hybrid solar / wind / natural gas power systems are comparable to expensive new nuclear construction such as the Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia.

Some of these solar and wind projects, covertly and overtly promoted by fossil fuel interests, are MORE expensive than nuclear power and will do nothing, absolutely nothing, to reduce the total amount of greenhouse gasses we humans eventually dump into the atmosphere.

The most dangerous energy resource isn't nuclear power. It's natural gas.