In her Nov. 13 op-ed (“California’s body politic is missing connective tissue”), SLO County supervisor and former PG&E employee Dawn Ortiz-Legg stated, “Recent proceedings at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) transmission planning process noted that keeping Diablo open till 2030 will save $3.2 billion.”
While I agree with her point that some of the disconnected, myopic silos of our state and federal regulating agencies create a big problem, I ask her to please cite where in the current CPUC case she derives this $3.2 billion savings? And please explain why, if continued operation is saving $3.2 billion, California ratepayers will pay almost half a billion dollars every year for the next five years (above market costs) to make up for the fact that PG&E spends more to operate Diablo Canyon than it can sell its power for in the CAISO marketplace?
The CPUC approved an additional rate increase of $722.6 million just to keep Diablo operating through the end of 2025. Californians already pay some of the highest electricity rates in the country—nearly double the national average—according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Ms. Ortiz-Legg also fails to mention the multi-generational cost burden of storing toxic, highly radioactive waste for untold eons on a site riddled with earthquake faults that will continue long after PG&E receives the last dollar of ratepayers’ money.
Dangerous, decrepit Diablo must be decommissioned. The Parcel P site and infrastructure should be converted to a truly clean energy facility, retaining current PG&E employees in new capacities. The remaining 12,000 acres of Diablo lands should be conserved for tribal and public use in perpetuity under the plan submitted to the California Legislature by the California Natural Resources Agency as mandated in SB 846.
Julie Mansafield-Wells
Los Osos
This article appears in Dec 4-14, 2025.
Diablo is one big grift, it’s a welfare program for everyone except mom& pop who get soaked every time time they flip the switch at home. Its outlived its lifecycle and for safety and should be shut down. Again, why do we need to pay for it, our economy in California, the US, and Europe is collapsing. During the Great Depression, there were no nuclear power plants. When the world dumps the dollar, as it is now, and everyone is unemployed, who will pay the staff and for the equipment to maintain these death traps? I feel like just a voice in the desert, OUR ECONOMY IS COLLAPSING.
Gold is over $4000 an oz, the yield curve has inverted, tech CEOs have been selling billions in their own stock, we incur 1 trillion in debt every 100 days, we are having problems selling national debt at auction, we are completely deindustrialized, the FDIC is under capitalized, AI is laying off white collar workers, food prices are untenable, mass layoffs occur every other week. Rich liberals are in denial because, hey, “the value of my house keeps going up. How could anything be wrong?” The reason houses keep going up isn’t because demand, it’s because the dollar is going down. In the background, all I can hear is Scott Bessent stuttering as he screams that there are no problems.
I would like to rebut the Julie Mansfield-Wells letter stating diablo must be decommissioned,
It was slated to be decommissioned years ago and was ramping down when wiser heads prevailed, realizing there was no substitute for the loss of the power it generated. The operational cost becomes insignificant considering this.
As far as replacing it with another emission free power source, she fails to mention what that is because it doesn’t exist. We can import power from other States,,but that ,makes us beholding to their rates and the fragility of the greatly outdated grid.
Solar and wind are intermittent and can not be ramped up in times of need, unlike nuclear.
“Toxic waste” is a misnomer. It can be reprocessed and reused. Why that is not now happening is, I believe. a matter of cost. All the current nuclear waste we now possess can be stored in one gm sized structure. Diablo’s current waste is now stored in a quake proof structure, and is so high up from the ocean that no tsunami could ever touch it. If one does I, we have more to worry about than Diablo.
We need the power more than we need the12,000 acres of land for ”tribal and public” use.”
My bon fides – Degrees in Chemistry, biology, a minor in physics and a doctorate in medicine
In the case that the faultline Diablo is built on shifted, it could potentially knock the containers spent fuel is stored in and crack open, spewing radiation and radioactive material all over the coast and ocean.
Again, with a collapsed economy and having had our assembly lines shipped overseas, where is the demand from industry that justifies having Diablo’s license extended? At this point, it is nothing more than a welfare program for unions and connected insiders. Our economy is toast and will never recover.
The container could be lifted off of the ground and dropped from 100 feet and not fracture. Do you r research.
According to USGS seismologist, Jeanne L. Hardebeck, the Shoreline Fault has potential to trigger an earthquake of 6.4–6.8 magnitude,[24] while the company asserts the facility is designed to withstand a 7.5 magnitude quake,[25] and NRC’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.[26][27] (Wikipedia)
Rex:
“he Titanic’s commander, Captain Smith, reportedly said of modern shipbuilding in a previous interview that he “cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.”
Lol.