Diablo Canyon Power Plant’s once-through cooling system (OTC) has finally been identified as a major killer of marine life by the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board (“What lurks beneath,” Dec. 17).
Before the Water Board gave PG&E a pass in 2015, San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace commissioned San Diego-based Powers Engineering to study the environmental damage caused by OTC. That study documented that Diablo Canyon’s cooling system draws in 2.5 billion gallons of water per day and discharges that water back into the cove 20 degrees (F) hotter, devoid of any life. Each year of operation, the plant sucks in more than a billion fish in early life stages while killing vast amounts of plankton, the foundation of life in our oceans.
The New Times quote of Thea Tryon, speaking on behalf of the Water Board, is revealing: “It was determined there was really no technical way of not having the thermal discharge.”
Mothers for Peace has for decades asserted that the way to end the decimation of the marine environment is simple: shut down both units of Diablo Canyon’s nuclear reactor. The Water Board, like PG&E, has always valued financial profits over environmental protection.
For economic reasons, PG&E has committed to shutting down the reactors—one at the end of 2024 and the other by December 2025. Unfortunately, billions more living beings in Diablo Cove will continue to be sacrificed for five more years.
Jane Swanson
spokesperson
San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace
This article appears in Dec 24, 2020 – Jan 3, 2021.
Worst decision the central coast will make is to decomission Diablo Canyon power plant. It provides steady, clean power to 5 million households every day. There is no alternative energy source that can say the same.
Diablo generates jobs and produces $1 billion worth of economic power each year for the central coast. It is up and running right now and the cost to de-construct it would be more than then its constructed life.
There are trade-offs with any energy source: unreliable wind turbines need blades and kill birds, solar abuses batteries that die. Without government subsidies neither is economically viable or dependable for our burgeoning electrical requirements.
Actually, the decision to shut down the Diablo Canyon reactors was made by PG&E, who stated that the plant was not economically feasible to continue.
There are tons upon tons of high-level radioactive waste sitting at Diablo with no where to go. It is being stored in the least safe possible way, in thin (1/2″ thick) stainless steel containers with concreate overpacks bolted down to a concrete pad and set up like bowling pins with no protection from nature or human attacks. The high-level waste stored in thicker containers (10 3/4″ thick, ductile iron) in a very robust building at Fukushima were unaffected by earthquake or the tsunami. Real time proof that thicker containers placed inside very robust buildings work.
Human beings are a competitive species. We’ve tilled millions of acres of farmland to improve food resources, laid thousands of miles of pavement to enable transport, dug coal mines and extracted millions of tons of iron ore to create steel to enable cars, buildings, dams and cookware. That’s an essential part of the progress which raised the quality of life from brutality to ease.
All this comes at a cost. If we return to the stone age, we will no longer cast a shadow on so much of the rest of the environment, but I don’t think that’s what you want. The goal is to succeed at the lowest cost to the environment, and that’s a political decision which will continue to be argued forever. In the meantime, California has gone from abundant abalone to almost none at all; it’s just how the world works.
Looks like candle making is going to have a bright future. I am curious? How can California keep lights, heating on? Solor not sustainable, banned gas. They can’t keep the electricity on in the so touted” 7th largest economy in the world “! Cmon man!
Rationing water. Facts are peoples lively hood and life is worth far less than marine or any animals. Actually PGE was forced to close Diablo because of California EPA and tightening of regulations. And now the homeless. How about SLO county rounding them up and giving the a Benjamin and a ticket to the central valley. That came from a off duty SLO Sheriffs deputy. That’s the reason I am no longer a California resident!
Jane, these claims of Diablo harming the marine environment are completely wrong, and I think you know it. We know that you care about man-made radioisotopes and fear that they are more dangerous than “natural” radiation. This isn’t true either, but I’ll leave that alone because that’s not the subject of your article.
Sounds like you wasted money on a study if all they found was that water comes out hotter than it goes in. Yes, that’s how the system works, to cool and raise efficiency of the plant that generates nearly 10% of all of California’s electricity. Like all operations at the plant, the discharge temperature is closely monitored, and governed by permits issued by NPDES. The maximum limit on the permit is 20degf, so naturally, the plant operates below that limit with margin given for minor fluctuations.
Regardless of the actual temperature rise, which you exaggerate, the claim that “more than a billion fish in early life stages” are harmed is irrelevant.
Ask any marine biologist – why do fish lay so many eggs? Why do fish have so many larva?
The answer – because only a few survive. This is a natural way for fish to safeguard the continuation of their species. The marine biologist will also tell you – the way you measure the health of a fish population is by measuring the adults. As long as there are enough adults, it’s evident that the species is surviving and thriving. So, the real measure of the degree that Diablo is a “marine life killer” is the health of the adult populations surrounding the plant, which has been shown over and over in numerous studies by all sorts of groups, neutral and against Diablo.
The marine environment around Diablo is one of the most pristine and thriving on the entire west coast of the US (also according to marine biologists from UC Santa Cruz). So, if you want to keep protesting Diablo, at least leave the marine environment out of it, because that’s the opposite of the point you want to make.