Humboldt’s Energy Agency May Accept Nuclear Power at Its Meeting Today
Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in 2005 [Image via WikiCommons from marya from San Luis Obispo, USA]
Seeking to add to its range of carbon-free energy, the Redwood Coast Energy Authority (RCEA) is considering a nuclear option and its board of directors could take action on it today.
The agency’s board first discussed it last month and was told by staff a decision had to made within weeks.
If chosen, the nuclear power would come from the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo county. Slated for decommissioning, the plant’s operation has been extended to 2030 or beyond. Ratepayers are paying for it and now energy agencies have the option of getting power from the plant at no additional cost.
The authority is struggling to meet its 100 percent carbon-free and renewable energy goal.
At a late August meeting, RCEA account director Jacyln Harr told the agency’s board of directors that an added mix of nuclear and hydroelectric power could achieve the goal by 2025,
“The combination of those two gets you over the hump to 100 percent renewable plus carbon-free,” she said.
If the agency continues its status quo power mix, it will have only 83 percent green power by 2026.
There will also be a financial shortfall under that scenario, of $4.7 million in 2025, although 2026 is projected to see a $2.5 million surplus.
Accepting the nuclear power and augmenting it with hydroelectric power will meet the goal and give the agency a $1 million surplus in 2026.
Another option is to add hydroelectric power to the energy mix and turn down the nuclear energy.
Doing that will get the agency to 100 percent green energy by 2026, with a $40,000 deficit following a $6.8 million shortfall in 2025.
The board’s staff said if the Diablo Canyon allotment is accepted, it will provide “roughly” 6.6 percent of the agency’s power load.
But RCEA Vice-Chair Scott Bauer, a Eureka city councilmember, noted nuclear power’s radioactive flaw.
“I can’t support nuclear because if we care about future generations, we’re gonna have to deal with hot material, radioactive material that lasts forever, essentially,” he said.
Boardmember and Humboldt County Supervisor Natalie Arroyo said if ratepayers are going to pay for the nuclear power anyway, they might as well benefit from it.
“It’s another one of those ‘hold your nose and maybe do it for fiscal reasons’ type of decisions,” she continued.
She added that if “our customers just cannot support nuclear even under these circumstances, I feel that’s an important consideration.”
But Arroyo differentiated between accepting power from an existing nuclear plant and taking it from a new one, saying, “Under these circumstances, I would be inclined to accept it.”
But a counter-argument is that accepting the nuclear power encourages it to continue or expand.
The decision is on the RCEA board’s agenda at its meeting today.
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Go for it. Ain’t gonna happen without uranium.
People really need to get updated about how advanced nuclear has come; it’s not your grandma’s shite grade munitions crap of the past. I really encourage people to look past the fear mongers and those that have invested interest in anti-nuclear because it digs into their profit profiles. Really, you don’t have to be a scientist to access and understand information on how this technology has improved and could be the answer to energy needs.
So what’s the status of waste disposal? Oh and runaway reactors in the age of terrorism?
Thorium salt reactors don’t have meltdown problems and breeder reactors can process all the waste from past reactor designs.
Thanks for the info. While not as simple as said (is anything?) I did check out this-
https://vittana.org/16-big-thorium-reactor-pros-and-cons
They’re talking about Diablo Canyon, so it is a past reactor design.
My grandpa in-law built the hydraulic benders that radiused the rebar in the containment domes. They had to circle the dome, and push sharp bends for any openings on the same piece. I still have a ram he took home afterwards that was used on the project.
Not what I was addressing, but yes, breeder reactors can process nuclear waste and those were originally designed in the 1950s.
If the market is heading towards electrifying everything, nuclear is the only solution.
I tend to agree. Nuclear is so effective that sooner or later I think it will be the better option. Let’s also look at technology. Most of the reactors are older then the internet.
Nuclear fuel can be infinitely recycled in plutonium breeder reactors. The only limiting factor is that most nations are prohibited from openly operating breeder reactors by non-proliferation treaties. The true barrier is that too many people simply shutdown and stop thinking as soon as they are confronted by the word radiation. If the steam heat radiator was invented today people would be making tiktok videos waring about getting irradiated by home heating radiator, cause they wouldn’t call it a radiator if it wasn’t radioactive.
Not unjustified fears in a world that includes Chernobyl and the Japanese dumping millions of gallons of contaminated water into the sea. Blaming people for reasonable fears does not lead to rational decisions.
Perfect is theoretical. Building is compromise. A relative made his livelihood for years going to various nuclear plants to redraw blueprints because none of the original blueprints were accurate. There may be a plan but then someone who actually buiilds it finds no one makes the specified fittings or a pipe can’t be put in a location so they do a workaround. A large part of any construction is like that.
It didn’t help that california built the first nuclear facility in humboldt. It didn’t get put here because of our power needs, but because we could be swept under the rug if it goes wrong. It wasn’t built in la,or sf,or San Diego. One of the rods broke off and sat in the cooling pool.then was dredged out unknowingly and put in a landfill.
Should change your name to “uninformed.”
It wasn’t the first.
True
They have no idea where that rod is
Barnwell, SC
It didn’t help that they built it pretty much right on top of the Little Salmon earthquake fault.
Your facts are wrong. There was a plant built near Pleasanton (Vallecitos) that was operating at least 5 years before Humboldt Bay.
Humboldt Bay might have been the first privately owned nuke plant.
Nope Vallecitos for CA.
Ok but they still lost 18 inches of enriched uranium I belive and it was a early model built for a town of less then 50,000. Now the dry casks that hold spent fuel are a extremely safe storage process. I belive they have a perfect record.
Not the first.
SM-1 Nuclear Reactor in Fort Belvoir, Virginia was the first atomic power generator to go online and produce electrical energy to the U.S. power grid. On May 26, 1958, the first commercial nuclear power plant in the United States, Shippingport Atomic Power Station went online. Humboldt Bay Atomic Power Station was the first reactor built and operated by a non government entity for commercial power generation.
I did say the first in California. But that is interesting.
No, nobody knows what happened to the segment. Most likely shipped to the reprocessing facility along with other irradiated fuel rods. And the first commercial nuke plant in CA was at Vallecitos.
I originally read it was thought to have been dredged out and put in a land fill in trinity. I think it was the times standard. The feds came thru after 911 wanting to know what happened to that piece of rod
Yes, just look how far Iran has come with their energy program. They should be able to put a nuke in Tel Aviv, any week now.
Is it an energy program, or weapons program? Either way, Iran’s nuclear program is about as advanced as the USA’s was in the 1940s, and much smaller. Israel has been armed with actual nuclear weapons for what? 40 years?
The Donald did that!
Yes, be sure to get your info via the nuke industry itself.
It would be a wise move to take the power now. Nuke is getting green and fills a perfect niche that isn’t filled by solar/wind/battery.
I agree really it’s not a decision of putting a plant here again. It’s producing power we can use. Some of the early plants had some backwards setups like raising and lowering rods by hand. I think it was 3 mile island. We have came a long ways with nuclear power.
Not 3 mile it’s sl1 in Idaho. It was a proto type designed for small scalemilitary use. But it’s rods had to be moved manually. They got a bit sticky and one was pulled to far .
Ugh! Activists and those to try to protect the community and the environment can never rest. Money and POWER, literally in this case, never sleep in their push for more!!!
I enjoy Supervisor Arroyo’s common touch approach. I too can be pragmatic about nuclear power and accept it, but I don’t have to like it (holding my nose while taking nuclear generation by the hand). It’s like marriage, not perfect, but it’s livable.
So, what was the vote?
For the last 6 months, I can say that 99.9% of my electricity was from renewable resources, since I was disconnected from any utility’s electrical grid for the most part, with the exception of the .01 percent.
Whatever l power source the utilities decide to use for electrical generation, I will be using the least amount of it as possible.
I would prefer a slightly warmed planet to a radioactive planet.
Science can tell the difference between pre atomic and atomic age bones. So you got your wish. I guess the learning curve was really steep with the nuke
Southern New mexico built a wipp site. That’s waste isolation pilot project. It’s a limestone cavern used to store irradiated material and such. He theory is over time it will be incased in limestone sealing it. It’s shut down now. It’s full. You maybe heard about yucca mountain during the Obama administration that was the next wipp site basically.
Anyone ever hear of the atomic boyscout? Some kid built a small scale device in his parents garden shed.