California to shut down last nuclear power plant by 2025

Insight

California to shut down last nuclear power plant by 20252

The world once hailed nuclear power as the future of clean energy. But California recently announced it’ll be shuttering its last nuclear power plant for good.

CCTV America’s Mark Niu reported.

California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant generates more than 8 percent of the state’s electricity. It’s California’s largest nuclear plant.

Now it can be claimed as being the state’s last.

Just last week, environmental group Friends of the Earth reached an agreement with Pacific Gas & Electric.

Diablo Canyon will shut down its two nuclear reactors by 2025, replacing them with renewable energy-like solar, water, and wind.

The U.S. currently has 61 nuclear power plants in operation with 99 total reactors. But since 2013, 14 reactors have either closed or are scheduled to be retired early. And now, environmentalists hope California’s decision will help spread the no-nuclear campaign globally.

But Daniel Hirsch, director of the Nuclear Policy program at the University of California-Santa Cruz has concerns based on past behavior of power plant management, since researchers discovered one, then two, then three and finally four active faults.

“The nuclear industry has been very shortsighted. It’s been brought to its knees by Chernobyl, by Fukushima, by Three Mile Island. Yet it never seems to learn the lesson that you don’t cut corners with a device that has 1000 times the long life radioactivity of the Hiroshima bomb,” Hirsch said.

Hirsch cited the Santa Susana reactor meltdown in Southern California. It happened in 1959-and it’s still being cleaned up today.

He’s also written about the lack of safeguards against terrorism at nuclear plants.


Jack Edlow on U.S Nuclear Power

For more on U.S. nuclear power, CCTV America’s Elaine Reyes spoke to Jack Edlow, president of Edlow International Company and managing director of Edlow International Australia Pty. Limited.