California cannot afford to ignore costs of continued reliance on aging nuclear plants and onsite high-level radioactive waste dumps.

In November 2005, Republican and Democrat lawmakers joined forces to protect citizens in their states from being threatened by storage of the nation’s high-level radioactive waste. Senator Reid (D-NV) and Senator Bennett (R-UT) have publicly called for leaving waste at reactor sites and Congress is beginning to follow suit. Nationwide, the support for offsite locations is rapidly dwindling. The mantra in Congress now appears to be “Leave it at reactor sites.” Geology, political controversy and transport problems have stalled the nation’s only proposed permanent nuclear waste repository for over three decades and the likelihood of a permanent site in the next two decades looks bleaker than ever.

Under PG&E’s license, 138 dry casks at Diablo Canyon -- covering an area the size of three football fields -- will remain in our county indefinitely. Without serious attention to the future costs/benefits and risks of the state’s continued reliance on nuclear electric generation, California could find itself forced to add on to the problem the storing pf hundreds of tons of radioactive waste for an additional 20-40 years, and possibly forever.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) approval of high density racking in existing spent fuel pools places those who live in the shadow of nuclear reactors in greater jeopardy. The radioactive waste in the pools is now capable of self-ignition if the water drops below a certain level. Unlike the reactors, the waste pools are located outside the steel-reinforced containment domes in far weaker structures, but contain far more dispersible radioactivity.

In addition, the NRC recently licensed dry cask storage facilities to store a small portion of the high-level radioactive waste that is in currently overcrowded spent fuel pools. The dry cask facilities lack sufficient protection and make the sites more vulnerable to acts of terrorism, malice and/or insanity. No matter the cause, one radioactive release could devastate the economy of California.

Relicensing issues
PG&E “announced it plans to spend $19 million to study whether it will apply to renew the operating licenses for Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.” The announcement followed a July 15, 2003, NRC meeting where the agency announced it plans to relicense all nuclear power facilities.“

PG&E has admitted that the onsite radioactive storage facility will not be adequate to store the high-level waste produced under a license renewal. This admission sends a clear signal that California must soon decide how much risk it is willing to accept for the increasing storage of radioactive waste in our state.

A November decision by the California Public Utilities Commission allowed cost-recovery for steam generator replacements at Diablo Canyon, and a similar decision is likely for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. These decisions will pave the way in preparing both nuclear facilities for license renewals. No nuclear facility that has replaced its steam generators has failed to apply for a license renewal.

California’s nuclear plants have been money sinks: original estimates of $500 million ballooned to over $5 billion in costs to ratepayers in the mid-1980s. A few years ago, a deregulation fiasco resulted in an $8 billion bailout for PG&E. Costs for repairs, new regulatory criteria, downtime and/or seismic issues were to be born by shareholders under the original settlement for Diablo Canyon, but these protections disappeared under California’s failed deregulation experiment.

California has the right and responsibility to phase out the production of high-level radioactive waste and limit the storage of this deadly material.

California has assumed that 4000 megawatts of generation will be available, reliable and economic for the foreseeable future. Consequently, the state has done no planning to replace this dangerous energy source. Costs of downtime due to age-related problems, vulnerability to acts of nature and/or humankind and production of additional tons of high-level radioactive waste stored on our fragile coastal bluffs with no end date in sight leave the state at increasing risk.

California’s reliance on unrealistic promises by the federal government relating to safe permanent storage of the high-level radioactive waste produced could result in prolonged power outages and incalculable economic risks. The state’s lack of planning has placed its ratepayers, economy and reliability of energy supplies in peril. With information disclosed in 2005, it has become clear that the state’s non-action is no longer acceptable.

The California Energy Commission’s (CEC) 2005 Report states:
Given the high level of uncertainty surrounding the federal waste disposal program, California’s utilities will likely be forced to retain spent fuel in storage facilities at currently operating reactor sites for an indefinite period of time. The state should evaluate the long-term implications associated with the continuing accumulation of spent fuel at California’s operating plants, including a case-by-case evaluation of public safety and ratepayer costs of on-site interim storage of spent fuel versus transporting spent fuel offsite for interim storage.

This fall, the CEC voted to continue the ban on new nuclear plants, making the prediction of a “clean” nuclear future by the likes of Stewart Brand, James Howard Kunstler and James Lovelock mute in California. While the few “environmental” supporters of new nuclear plants have made international press, their support usually is tempered by the acknowledged failure to find a solution to permanent storage of the waste produced during operation. This temperance is also evident at Wall Street:

“Those who see the present climate as a return to the good times for nuclear power may have good reason to examine that conclusion a little more closely. No nation has chosen a new nuclear plant through an open and transparent procurement process. It has turned out that competition policy and buyer choices mean a lot more. Private investors saw TMI [Three Mile Island] transform from a $2 billion asset to a $1 billion clean up job in about 90 minutes, and they haven’t forgotten that.” (Testimony of Peter Bradford, former NRC Commissioner before the CEC, August 16, 2005)

The Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility supports the CEC’s recommendations. We have asked the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors to send a letter supporting the Commission’s recommendation and to request to be part of the process for a new state-of-the art generation facility. This step would assure that SLO County would be the beneficiary of new jobs, property taxes and infrastructure to compensate for the risks left behind from the operation of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. At the same time, the Alliance is requesting state legislation mandating and funding the CEC’s recommended analysis.

The Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility asks HopeDance readers to join our effort to create legislation that will prohibit license renewals for the state’s operating nuclear plants and encourage replacement generation in the communities most in peril. A brighter energy future will result from California being the first state in the nation to say firmly, “No more nuclear power generation without a permanent safe solution to the production of radioactive waste.”

ROCHELLE BECKER has been active on nuclear safety issues in California for nearly 30 years. As executive director of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility (www.a4nr.org), she guides a statewide group towards its goals of amending legislation to prohibit the relicensing of California’s nuclear power plants until the high-level radioactive waste problem is resolved.


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