As recently as 2022, PG&E was moving forward with plans to shut down the Diablo Canyon Power Plant. Its current licenses set to expire in 2024 for Unit 1 and 2025 for Unit 2, California's last operating nuclear power plant would stop producing electricity and move forward with decommissioning. An advisory panel had been assembled to determine what that might look like as well as what would happen to the land where the plant currently sits.
But then came warnings from climate scientists and operators of the state's power grid about what shuttering the plant might do to both the supply of electricity and the environment, leading to a last-minute attempt to keep Diablo running.
In 2016, PG&E announced plans to withdraw an application it had submitted to extend the operating licenses beyond 2024 and 2025.
PG&E's CEO stated at the time, "I am sorry to see it go, because from a national energy policy standpoint, we need greenhouse gas-free electricity, but we are regulated by the state of California, and California's policies are driving this."
California lawmakers were putting the emphasis on renewable energy.
Nuclear power is not a source of renewable energy. It is fueled by a limited resource and it does produce radioactive waste, but what it does not produce is carbon, or greenhouse gasses. So while it's not renewable, it is classified as green energy, or energy that does not contribute to global climate change.
But after two years of unrelenting wildfires in 2020 and 2021 combined with severe drought and soaring temperatures, California was forced to develop a plan to make sure it had enough energy and respond to climate change.
In essence, it came down to a choice between the most immediate threat – climate change -- or the long-term storage of more nuclear waste.
There was increasing pressure from climate scientists and the public to take another look at Diablo Canyon.
Governor Gavin Newsom was convinced.
"And this is critical in the context of making sure we have energy reliability going forward," he said. "It is part of our energy plan and yes, part of our climate plan because that form of energy does not produce greenhouse gasses. That energy provides base load and reliability and affordability that will complement and allow us to stack all of the green energy online at record rates."
PG&E got the call to once again reverse course.
"Because the energy projections, the electric grid reliability, the demand increases, electrification, electric vehicles -- the projections were showing that there is going to be, you know, ten times the need for more generating facility, more capacity," said Maureen Zawalick, Vice President of Business and Technical Services at Diablo Canyon Power Plant.
Members of Mothers for Peace, a group that has been advocating against nuclear power for decades, disagree.
"As I've said before, that's a false trade-off. You don't have to say it's either carbon dioxide or radioactive waste. We have all these great renewables and the increase in battery capacity, so the choice is contaminate your planet or keep it livable for future generations by not doing either fossil fuels or nuclear for us," said Jane Swanson, one of the original members of Mothers for Peace.
But even if the state continued with the push for only renewable energy, it still needs to meet the electricity demands of its residents.
When California doesn't have enough energy, it is purchased from neighboring states – neighboring states that generate power using mostly fossil fuels. In essence, we'd be trading so-called "clean energy" for energy that contributes to global climate change and according to PG&E, at a cost that would be more than the cost of keeping Diablo Canyon running.
That left many asking, why shut down an operating plant with an impeccable safety record that does not contribute to climate change while transitioning to renewable energy?
A 2021 report from researchers at MIT and Stanford states that keeping Diablo Canyon running until 2035 would reduce the state's carbon emissions from electricity generation by 11% every year, save the state a cumulative $2.6 billion, and improve the reliability of the grid.
"You know, the other thing I would say is keeping Diablo running, it's very cost-effective from a standpoint of the other load-serving entities or investor-owned utilities, not, having to, you know, pay for the resource adequacy that Diablo is providing. Right? And that's, you know, of a fairly large figure as well. So there's a lot of societal benefits, environmental benefits and cost benefits to continuing to run such a safe, high-performing plant," Zawalick said.
For now, the state has asked PG&E to keep the generators running at Diablo through 2030 as a kind of "stop-gap" until additional power generating stations and battery storage can be brought online, but it's still far from a done deal. Many regulatory bodies have a say in whether or not the plant keeps operating and not everyone agrees keeping the plant running is the best path forward.
Next Tuesday, tune in to KSBY News at 6 for part three of our series, "The Diablo Dilemma." Anchor Richard Gearhart will take a look at some of those hurdles and get a better idea of where we are in the process.
WATCH: Part 1 of The Diablo Dilemma: A look back at the nuclear power plant’s complicated history
