No (more) nukes

TWENTY-FIVE years ago, the antinuclear movement was about the biggest thing going on in California. Mass demonstrations routinely drew huge crowds. In October 1981, close to 2,000 people were arrested at the gates of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, in San Luis Obispo, and groups like the Abalone Alliance and Mothers for Peace helped block the plant from opening on time and forced years of delays. Then-governor Jerry Brown formally intervened in the federal hearings on licensing the plant. Movie stars, rock stars, religious leaders ... all sorts of celebrities put the antinuclear movement in the headlines.

And on a very important level, it worked. Yes, Diablo got its license and eventually went into operation, and we're all still paying for it today in high electric bills and the risk of radioactive contamination along the central coast. But that was the last nuclear plant built in California, and for a long time it was easy to believe that there was no future in the state for this dangerous, astronomically expensive technology.

Think again.

As Matthew Hirsch reports on page 16, the nuclear industry, emboldened by a 2005 Bush initiative called NP (for nuclear power) 2010 that sets aside $1 billion for siting new nukes, has its eyes on building a new generation of plants all over the country. And while California still has laws limiting the construction of new plants, PG&E, which owns the Diablo Canyon nuke, is already taking the preliminary steps to relicense the plant for another 20 years. That's not just equivalent to building a new plant – it's worse.

Nuclear power plants were designed to last about 30 years, and that's how long the federal government licenses allow them to operate. But quietly, more than 100 utilities around the country have applied for license renewals. In some cases they're applying 10 years before the current license runs out.

Diablo is licensed until 2025, but unless the state intervenes, PG&E could sneak through a license renewal and have the plant certified to operate until 2056. That's a truly frightening prospect. The particles emitted by the reactor core batter the thick concrete and make it brittle. The parts wear out. The growing pile of deadly, radioactive nuclear waste sits in the equivalent of swimming pools on the reactor site, near a city of 50,000 people, because there's no place else to put it – and if the government ever builds a long-term waste dump, that huge pile of poison will have to be shipped right through town.

PG&E isn't even sure exactly how to refuel the plant (a necessity for another 30 years of operation). The reactor core, which is about as radioactive as anything can be short of a nuclear bomb, is too big to fit out the door of the plant, so the current scenario involves cutting a big hole in the roof and lifting it out with a crane. Talk about a disaster waiting to happen.

And let's remember: This plant sits on an active earthquake fault. The Hosgri Fault has been relatively stable since the plant was built, but that won't last – and every day that this menace sits on the shoreline is another day that the odds of a catastrophic event increase, involving long-term contamination of wide swaths of land and water.

The antinuclear movement of the 1970s and '80s largely disappeared as the threat of new plants waned (nobody has actually placed an order for a commercial nuclear power plant since 1973). But that's going to change: The Bush administration has a goal of getting at least one new order by the end of this decade and 39 new plants over the next 25 years – and PG&E has already started on a feasibility study for relicensing.

Of course, San Francisco ratepayers have forked over vast sums of cash to pay for Diablo Canyon. And as long as PG&E has monopoly control over the local energy market, that's going to continue. Which is another reason the city needs to move at full speed toward replacing PG&E with public power. (In Sacramento the public-power agency shut down its ill-considered nuke years ago, saving ratepayers millions.)

Meanwhile, the state legislature needs to pass a bill barring any relicensing of existing California nukes. And San Francisco – along with every other city in the state – needs to join the battle immediately.