[Sustain] Important Hearing Friday on Diablo shutdown; please attend/comment

[Don Eichelberger]

      Hearing Friday on Diablo Canyon Closure Proposal—Please speak out!
      Nine more years and no guarantees: No Deal!

PG&E will hold the second of two public statewide meetings this Friday 
in San Francisco to discuss the proposed shutdown of the two nuclear 
reactors at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP) and replacement of lost 
power with renewables, conservation and storage. In exchange for the 
shutdown, among other things, the reactors will run nine more years, 
unmolested by calls for a long overdue Environmental Impact Report.

*NINE YEARS IS TOO LONG! We urge your support in a call for the soonest 
possible shutdown date.*

/Nine years more:/

·Will produce tons more waste with no place to be put;

·Will destroy untolled marine life by the ocean intake cooling system;

·Gives time for PG&E to consolidate its hold on California’s solar 
industry; and

·Nine more years of praying the Big One doesn’t hit that section of 
faulted coastline.

The nine year transition time was the trade made for PG&E’s guarantee 
that the void would be filled with energy efficiency, renewables and 
energy storage and includes a PG&E commitment to a 55 percent renewable 
energy target in 2031. But, the State of California, through SB350, 
already mandates 50% renewable energy by 2030, anyway, so what gives?

See below for a list of concerns raised by Mother’s for Peace, a report 
on the State Lands Commission June meeting and analysis of the proposal 
by Abalone Alliance Safe Energy Clearinghouse, and a point-by-point 
rebuttal of claims by Lt. Governor Gavin Newsome that the agreement is 
the best deal.


      Please attend the Friday meetings: Two meetings to be held that
      day are open to the public. Each meeting will cover the same
      information and follow the same format. For parties unable to
      attend public information meetings, comments can be submitted to
      diablocanyon at pge.com <mailto:diablocanyon at pge.com> prior to July
      26, 2016.


    *San Francisco*


    July 22, 2016

*Meeting 1/: Noon to 3:45pm/*/Meeting 2*: 4:15 to 8:00pm*/

*/South San Francisco/**/Conference Center/**/, 255 S. Airport 
Boulevard, South San Francisco, CA 94080/*

/Public Transit is sparse, but appears from SFO Airport or Millbrae 
BART, catch SamTrans Bus #397 going north, which stops at or near the 
conference center./

Long-time Diablo opponents, Mothers for Peace, have suggested the 
following topics might be among those discussed:

1.    Under what circumstances might PG&E back out of its offer to 
abandon license renewal and replace the electricity from Diablo with 
100% renewables?

  2.    At what point in time will we be GUARANTEED the shut-down date? 
What is the point of no return for PG&E?

3.    In section 2.3 of the Joint Proposal it is specified that PG&E 
will not issue its Request For Offers (RFOs) of renewable energy until 
2020. Why not seek those immediately?

4. What if anything is PG&E giving up by offering this Joint Proposal? 
It appears that license renewal was not an option anyway, because PG&E 
will profit more from renewables than from operating reactors designed 
in the 1960’s. And the State of California through SB350 mandates 50% 
renewable energy by 2030 anyway.

5.The People of California are asked to give up protection of marine 
life for another 9 years. We are told by SLC that this Joint Proposal 
takes off the table an EIR of the effects within the tidelands of 9 more 
years of operation. This Proposal looks like a deal whereby PG&E gets to 
strengthen its bottom line while escaping accountability for the 
environmental damage being caused by the plant every day it operates.

  6.    How will the Joint Proposal, if implemented, affect Community 
Choice Aggregation programs in California?

  7.    Given that the funding to provide a cushion of tax monies for 
the San Luis Obispo schools will come out of decommissioning funds, tell 
us how we can know that there will be sufficient funds to dismantle the 
plant after closure.  Will rate-payers be providing those funds, or 
shareholders?

  8.    MFP supports PG&E’s efforts to provide economic stability for 
the workers that are needed at Diablo until shut-down, but questions 
whether that money should come out of decommissioning funds or from the 
shareholders. Please explain PG&E’s thinking in proposing that it come 
from rate-payers via the decommissioning funds.

9.    The Joint Proposal doesn’t mention the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission’s necessary approval for removing money from the 
decommissioning funds to use for purposes other than decommissioning. 
How is this deficiency going to be addressed?

10. Has the water Board formally excused PG&E from compliance with 
California policy to end once-through cooling on the California 
coastline? Will Diablo continue to cause 80% of the human-caused 
destruction of marine life on the CA coast until 2025?

11. What changes will PG&E be asking of the PUC regarding homes, parking 
lots and businesses that ALREADY have solar roofs? What transmission 
fees and what buy-back programs?

*California State Lands Commission kills Diablo Environmental Review; 
PG&E Makes Grab for Solar Industry*

Don Eichelberger, Abalone Alliance Safe Energy Clearinghouse, 
www.energy-net.org <http://www.energy-net.org>

  June 28^th , the California State Lands Commission (SLC), reversed 
their earlier call for an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Environmental_Quality_Act>, 
extending a lease of state lands to PG&E without an EIR that will allow 
Diablo Canyon reactors to operate beyond the original 2018 deadline, at 
least to their NRC license end dates of 2024 and 2025, respectively.

Many longtime activists looked on astonished as PG&E orchestrated its 
bid to gain control of the solar energy market in California. PG&E 
hailed their new agreement to shut down Diablo Canyon, in exchange for 
concessions, as a historic occasion, pointing the way to move in an 
orderly fashion away from nuclear power and toward a future of renewable 
energy and conservation; something Californians have been doing for a 
long time anyway, in spite of PG&E and other utilities’ efforts to 
suppress these sales-robbing technologies.

There was agreement by the deal’s critics that the nine-year delay in 
shutting down Diablo Canyon while building renewables will give PG&E 
time it needs to solidify a monopoly on renewables at the expense of 
small, local, independent installers and neighborhood coops. Large, 
centralized, grid-linked solar installations will dominate the market if 
utilities get their way and undermine more decentralized technologies 
and the security they offer against grid failures. Plus, there are no 
dividends going to utility investors; customers pocket the production 
payments and credits fuel local installation and service business.

The SLC’s day-long hearings, held at two locations simultaneously, 
turned out a big crowd of those both pro and con. San Luis Obispo local 
politicians, school board members, Diablo Canyon Brotherhood of 
Electrical Workers union and others lined up to show their support for 
keeping the reactor running for as long as possible. Opponents were wary 
of PG&E for what we considera long history of lawlessness; from the 
theft of municipal power generated at Hetch-Hetchy, to the poisoning 
Hinkley water, to pocketing the money needed to keep its gas pipelines 
in good repair, leading to the San Bruno pipeline explosion.

Activists were united in saying an environmental review for the plant 
was long overdue and that nine years to transition to renewables is too 
long. Many stressed that it could be done much more quickly if the glut 
of Diablo Canyon power could be removed from the grid sooner than later.

After the decision, follow-up messages to Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom led 
to an open letter from him (see below) challenging opponents, claiming 
the agreement held the maximum possible benefits obtainable.

*Public Trust *

The Lt. Governor hailed the agreement for upholding the Public Trust 
Doctrine by “forcing PG&E to the table” (with his prior call for an EIR) 
and getting their assurance the reactors will shut down at the end of 
their current licenses, with PG&E’s added guarantee that Diablo Canyon 
power will be replaced strictly with renewables and conservation. He 
asserted this was the best deal possible.

It is our belief the Commission failed to protect the Public Trust 
<https://c-win.org/public-trust-doctrine/> by failing to balance PG&E’s 
and San Luis Obispo’s interests with those of the rest of the state. 
Clearly, PG&E has seen the reports of an electricity market shrinking 
from conservation and roof top solar taking its customers since the 
invent of reverse metering and plummeting hardware costs. From the start 
it was evident the fix was in. The Commission could and should have 
called for testimony from the solar industry and the California Energy 
Commission to take a closer look at the Diablo Canyon deal.

Finalized only the week before the hearing, the plan to close the 
reactors was presented as a done deal. PG&E’s supporters were given free 
reign to claim the harm they face at Diablo’s closure. The audience was 
also warned by Commissioners that a sudden reactor stoppage, as with the 
sudden shutdown of San Onofre, would not be tolerated, citing fear of 
high priced and greenhouse gas-bearing natural gas replacement power.

In fact, the deal is nowhere near final, as it must first be approved by 
the California Public Utilities Commission, and the utility can pull out 
of the voluntary agreement at any time. CPUC may also have problems with 
the additional $2 billion the deal calls for to finish paying off Diablo.

The state’s solar industry, if it had been present, could have educated 
the Commissioners of their capability of producing far more jobs and 
power replacement by 2018 than could PG&E. The industry is exploding as 
solar costs go down; already over 65,000 jobs have been created in 
California vs. Diablo’s 1,500. A planned 22,000 megawatts of new solar 
capacity will be installed over the next five years, ten times Diablo’s 
2,200 megawatt output.

TheSLC staff’s repor 
<http://slc.ca.gov/Meetings/06-28-16/Items_and_Exhibits/96.pdf>t 
(already removed from their web site) that reversed its previous call 
for an EIR was released only 5 days prior to the vote, leaving the 
public with an unacceptable amount of time to respond. Many concerned 
organizations requested a delay, even suggesting that the SLC was 
breaking state meeting laws.  The Commissioners ignored delay requests 
and voted 3-0 in favor of PG&E getting a lease extension and no EIR.

In a troubling revelation by Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility 
attorney and former California Energy Commissioner, John Geesman, the 
SLC staff was shown to have used PG&E’s own flawed seismic analyses as 
reason for not carrying out an EIR, suggesting PG&E helped them write 
the report. Another reason staff cited to refuse the EIR was the 
California State Water Control Board’s political dismissal of the 
plant’s aquatic damages.

SLC used its own recently adopted regulations to deny the EIR, while the 
far more stringent CEQA exemption codes 
<http://wingspress.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=029b12acb80c80346c4f97272&id=69906c8df1&e=1a3f5bd5c3> 
would allow the SLC to go ahead with either a draft or full review based 
on extraordinary events that have happened (such as recent and ongoing 
discovery of new earthquake faults at the plants, events at Fukushima, 
etc.) or by a major earthquake prior to 2025.

The SLC Commissioners said the ten year extension fulfilled their duty 
to the Public Trust Doctrine by protecting the public from an abrupt, 
San Onofre styled closure that supposedly led to large scale natural gas 
replacement (actually caused by a corrupt CPUC 
<http://wingspress.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=029b12acb80c80346c4f97272&id=e35d258811&e=1a3f5bd5c3>), 
job losses by workers, and the loss of property taxes that would affect 
the county’s schools.

Proponents calling for the EIR were told their efforts would result in 
increasing the state’s use of natural gas. Challenging that notion, many 
speakers gave voice to the belief that the commission could have given 
PG&E a shorter lease, expediting the shift to renewable energy, rather 
than waiting until 2020 to begin the replacement.

We are witnessing nothing less than a new wave of centralized control by 
utilities crashing to shore. This ten-year delay in mobilizing 
renewables will give PG&E the time it needs to exploit their agenda at 
the expense of small independent sources. Centralized power, no matter 
what the source, will undermine solar rooftop development that could 
shift resources back to the general public and away from profit 
motivated systems.

Micro grid development must be the primary plan for California to make 
local communities self sufficient; the state’s aging grid system should 
be phased out*.*

*Responses to Gavin Newsom’s Claims on the Diablo Canyon Deal, 
point-by-point, compiled by Abalone Alliance Safe Energy Clearinghouse 
and others affiliated with the Nuclear-Free California anti-nuclear 
network:*

*/Claim:/*/ If I could decommission Diablo Canyon and replace it 
responsibly without increased carbon emissions tomorrow, I would do it. /

No one is saying you can or should replace lost DC power by tomorrow, 
but we do feel nine years is too long. Tons of radioactive wastes will 
be produced without anyplace to go, and one of the world’s most majestic 
(and expensive) landscapes, its ocean population and agricultural land 
will remain threatened by the considerable seismic activity in the area 
whose potential for the unexpected we saw at Fukushima.

*Claim/:/*/“Those who called for an EIR review have not been able to 
explain what it would accomplish above and beyond these concessions.”/

There is nothing binding in the document and it can still be withdrawn 
by PG&E or blocked by the CPUC. We have no guarantee that PG&E will 
close Diablo Canyon by 2025.  As of the end of 2015, PG&E was still 
actively preparing to extend its NRC license for Diablo Canyon.

What we do have is an MOU that the SLC is not party to and that could be 
reversed by the CPUC, an agency with a failed history of protecting the 
public. They could easily find that the economic agreement to add an 
additional $2 billion to Diablo rates, above what it has already 
recovered, as demanded by PG&E, is enough to scuttle the agreement.

The agreement can and should be made stronger, starting with a binding 
agreement, backed by withdrawal of NRC License Extension requests, for 
an organized closure with a much shorter timeframe. Negotiations need to 
reflect the reality that we are dealing with a private company, easily 
able to buck state policy by a move out of state or merging with a 
larger entity—a long term goal of the U.S. electric industry.

State officials need also to understand that PG&E’s corporate culture 
should be treated as a criminal, just as individuals are in this society 
that break the law. California’s government is being divided and 
conquered by PG&E. It came out during the SLC hearings that the state 
water board, which was taken over by the nuclear industry under 
Schwarzenegger and Brown, allowed a waiver for environmental impacts of 
Diablo Canyon’s once-through ocean water cooling system until 2025.

In addition, as part of the legal case over San Onofre rates, governor 
Brown could very well be acting outside the law since he, as well as the 
CPUC, are refusing to share emails between themselves.  Whether it is 
cozy relations between utilities and CPUC, the recent scandal over the 
Assembly’s Speaker’s Slush fund, the medical Pay to Play scandal, 
California doesn’t need anymore scandals.

SLC has no detailed /ex parte/ regulations as required by the CPUC. We 
therefore call on SLC, and Gavin Newsom specifically, to submit detailed 
reports on conversations you, staff or other commissioners have had with 
all parties and how long said discussions lasted.  As mentioned in 
Newsom’s comments at the end of his presentation, he had had extensive 
conversations with Stewart Brand, who is very likely not registered as a 
lobbyist, but should be.

*Claim: **A/signed and written agreement that the lost power of Diablo 
Canyon can only be replaced by a combination of renewable energy and 
energy efficiencies/***

Mr. Lt. Governor, are you stating for the record that your agency has 
received an agreement to such affect, or are you referring to the MOU 
between PG&E and the six parties? Ms. Williams said that agreement 
constitutes an “unprecedented *voluntary *commitment by a major US 
energy company”.

We applaud the sentiment, but the question remains: why is PG&E waiting 
until 2018 and 2020 to begin submitting replacement power plans? And 
wouldn’t this be required in any case since the state has mandated this 
requirement elsewhere?

Holding onto such a large base load source is actually retarding faster 
development of renewable power. The state of California is in the midst 
of a major political confrontation concerning how to proceed with solar; 
PG&E and the other states’ Investor Owned Utilities (IOU’s) are clearly 
opposed to solar rooftops. They are actively seeking redress via allies 
within the CPUC, as recently pointed out in an interview with PG&E’s 
president at the EEI National Convention.

Recent reports state that up to 75% of the state’s electric needs could 
come from solar rooftop power, yet the MOU agreement actively is skewed 
towards allowing large baseload. Large, centralized solar stations play 
a dominant role that would undermine the potential for far more jobs, 
independent of big, corporate money, which could be used to build out 
rooftop solar. It is now possible for a solar rooftop to be tied to a 
homeowner’s hot water heater to store heat during its peak production time.

*Claim://**/The written public acknowledgement, for the first time, by a 
major utility corporation that renewable energy is more cost efficient 
than nuclear power./*

On the face of it, this is worth celebrating. But it is clearly way too 
long in coming.  We are all now paying dearly for a boondoggle that has 
gone on for too long.PG&E came late to the party, yet demands a door prize?

In 1992 the majority of the world’s Nobel Peace Prize winners signed a 
petition stating that we had 20 years to address climate change issues.  
The United States as a whole and specifically the energy industry made 
sure that the public failed to understand what that urgency meant. The 
world’s private energy lobbyists continue to do everything in their 
power to keep the public uneducated about the growing impacts of climate 
change and what to do about it.

Nuclear power is clearly not the answer, despite claims of being 
GHG-free, which are false when the entire nuclear fuel chain is 
considered. Safe, less costly and less complex technologies sit on the 
shelf and new ones are being developed daily that can do just fine 
without nuclear, thank you very much.

*/Claim: /**/The written public acknowledgement, for the first time, by 
a major utility corporation that the era of baseload power is over, and 
that renewable sources can carry the weight of energy production./**//*

In its position paper, Friends of the Earth openly urges PG&E to use 
large, centralized solar concentrating stations in the central valley, 
backed by storage, as a prominent part of its replacement plan. By 
concentrating solar, much energy security is lost to the threat of grid 
outages. In addition, centralized solar development is clearly impacting 
sensitive desert environmental habitat that should not be disturbed. Why 
concentrate solar production when it is so much more efficient, is 
environmentally more sensitive and creates more jobs to build solar 
rooftops?

It should be noted that the largest central concentrating station in the 
country, located in California, was recently saved from bankruptcy, and 
also incurred major damages from overheating.  (It could very well be a 
matter of corporate arson to cover its failure to operate at the levels 
promised by designers.)

*/Claim: /**/A signed and written agreement that PG&E will provide 55% 
of its entire energy sales through renewable sources, from 2031./**//*

As shown in recent studies, the state’s solar industry could easily, in 
short order, provide 74% of the state’s energy needs (Source: Dept. of 
Energy’s National Renewable Energy Labs) and is already planning over 
22,000 megawatts of power in the next five years, creating far more jobs 
than Diablo Canyon ever has.

Californiaactivists have been pushing for solar and wind development for 
over 30 years, but have been stymied by IOU’s and fossil fuel interests 
they represent. These interests are profit driven. IOU’s have long been 
pushing for large baseload systems while at the same time pushing to 
break away from their grid and pipeline responsibilities.

*Prepared for /Nuclear-Free California/*www.nuclearfreecal.org/nfcnet/ 
<http://www.nuclearfreecal.org/nfcnet/>*by /Abalone Alliance Safe Energy 
Clearinghouse/* www.energy-net.org <http://www.energy-net.org/>

**

-- 
Don Eichelberger Abalone Alliance Safe Energy Clearinghouse/ Nuclear 
Free California Shut down nuclear power www.nuclearfreecal.org/nfcnet/ 
www.energy-net.org Expose the back room dealer elite at Bohemian Grove 
www.exposebohemiangrove.net more info at: 
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/03/01/18708527.php And also: 
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/07/07/18758353.php Follow at 
www.Facebook.com/BGANsc Learn about the Evolution of the US Surveillance 
State https://surveillance1984blog.wordpress.com/ More about me at 
www.Facebook.com/DonEichelberger Check my original music at 
www.MySpace.com/donnyfix "The government of an exclusive company of 
merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country 
whatever." Adam Smith, "Wealth of Nations" Ch.7 “When there’s a huge 
solar energy spill, it’s just called a ‘nice day'." -author unknown- 
"The revolt against brutality begins with a revolt against the language 
that hides that brutality." -Rebecca Solnit- "It is dangerous to be 
right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." -Voltaire
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