The only working nuclear plant left in the state provides 8.6% of total California generation (23% of carbon-free generation). It was under threat of shut down. Luckily, legislatures have decided to let it continue it’s production of reliable, carbon-free power for 5 to 10 more years.
This was the result of continued efforts by activists and scientists, who pointed out that keeping Diablo Canyon online would reduce California’s annual GHG emissions from electricity generation by over 10%, save billions of dollars, as well as making the grid less vulnerable to black-outs (See Stanford, Stanford+MIT study and a public letter by 79 climate and energy scientists urging to keep Diablo Canyon online). In other words, saving this plant is great news for humans, for the environment, and even economically.
This is a rather big deal, considering that California is pretty much the birth place of the US anti-nuclear movement. This is part of a noticeable 180-turn that is happening across the world, where nuclear energy has increasingly gained positive attention. Even in Japan, we see commitments to restart nuclear plants that were put on stand-by after Fukushima In Germany, of all places, we see some signs (fingers crossed) of overturning decade(s) long anti-nuclear policy - that being - a nuclear-phaseout planned to be completed at the end of 2022, during which Germany’s three remaining NPPs (supplying Germans 6-8% of their energy) would be shut down.
Borrowing the words of environmental activist George Monbiot; such decisions to shut down existing low-carbon capacity in the middle of a climate crisis is just absolute madness. The madness only became worse as Germany was facing the difficulty to replace both nuclear and coal power. Solar and wind are as of yet unreliable to act as a full substitute, so Germany turned to natural gas as the renewable back-up… specifically from Russia. This was made explicit in the speech by Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel at the 49th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos on 23 January 2019:
We will have phased out nuclear energy by 2022. We have a very difficult problem, namely that almost the only sources of energy that will be able to provide baseload power are coal and lignite. Germany has now phased out its own coal production. That means that subsidies have been discontinued. Lignite isn’t subsidised and is thus a relatively cheap but very CO2‑intensive source of energy. We’ve therefore set up a commission which is examining the phasing‑out of coal-based power in Germany and is now in the final stage of its work. Naturally, we cannot do without baseload energy. Natural gas will therefore play a greater role for another few decades. The dispute about where our natural gas comes from is thus a bit over the top. For, on the one hand, it’s perfectly clear that we’ll continue to obtain natural gas from Russia. However, it goes without saying that we want to diversify. We’ll therefore also purchase liquid gas – perhaps from the United States and other sources. We’re thus expanding infrastructure in all directions. However, I believe we would be well advised to admit that if we phase out coal and nuclear energy then we have to be honest and tell people that we’ll need more natural gas. What’s more, energy has to be affordable.
Let’s just say, this plan didn’t work out very well. Hopefully the greens within the German government will learn from their mistakes and listen to (real) environmentalists and the scientists. The greens of Finland have already done so.
The increasingly positive attitude towards nuclear is probably the result of the recent energy crisis that was exacerbated after Russia’s war on Ukraine. This isn’t really surprising. A similar thing happened during the oil crisis of the 1970’s. This gave rise to a famous saying in France:
“In France, we don’t have oil, but we have ideas”
What was the idea? Build nuclear plants! France enacted the Messmer Plan in 1974. This would lead to one of the fastest increase in energy capacity in history.
France went from ~10% nuclear to >65% 10 years later, and ~80% after an additional 10 years. Not just that, absolute electricity capacity of the whole country DOUBLED and carbon intensity went from over 500 to 100-50 kg CO2 per MWh.
Left France, Germany to the right for contrast.
Remember, France achieved this in less than 2 decades, disproving the common anti-nuclear claim that nuclear plants can’t be constructed fast enough in time to prevent climate change. Even today, France remains one of the few places in the world with low-carbon electricity, and these rely mostly on either nuclear, hydro, or both.
So yeah, it turns out that when fossil fuels supply runs into problems, people turn to nuclear for economical reasons. France’s motivation to increase nuclear capacity wasn’t environmentally driven, yet it had positive environmental outcomes. Hopefully, this trend will continue and people will finally catch on with the environmental benefits of nuclear power as well.