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@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

 June 28^th, the California State Lands Commission (SLC), reversed their earlier call for an Environmental Impact Report (EIR), 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 consider  a 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 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.

The SLC staff’s report (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 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), 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.

California activists 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/                                                              by Abalone Alliance Safe Energy Clearinghouse www.energy-net.org