Diablo Canyon: California's Last Nuclear Power Plant | Earth Focus | Season 5, Episode 5 | PBS SoCal 

I'd vote for a nuclear power facility to get built in the Bay Area if it were possible. "M-MUH SIESMIC ACTIVITY!" some folks might screech. This is absurd. We can build nuclear energy facilties to handle a 10.0 Richter scale earthquake. I'm tired of the excuses. Use solar, wind, tide, hydroelectric, geothermal (the Geysers in Sanoma, for example) energies, and invest in battery techs (thermal, or chemistries possibly other than lithium) but also invest in nuclear energy. It's a no brainer. I'm not only YIMBY. I'm willing to live in a nuclear energy facility for the rest of my long and healthy life. I'm done with the absurdity. Build nuclear energy now or continue suffering consequences like global warming, deteriorating our global and local ecology, and just generally living with a worse, global well-being than we could have. I know we dealt with a lot of drama during the Cold War from the 50s to present day (the war ended, but the people alive from that time still do policy similar to the cold war era), but I really wish Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace model had triumphed more over what evolved into the Atoms for War model that the MIC adopted for incredible profit (trillions of dollars over the decades). We could be living in a much better world by now.

Solar is safer......and you have no dump to take the waste to. How about your neighborhood?

@@dawnanewday9671 no dump? What do you do with 2 million solar panels? Nuclear waste is safely stored in concrete canisters. Then, either bury it or recycle it. No big deal

​@dawnanewday9671 solar has a lot issues on non renewable materials and non recyclable materials from the panels themselves. Sustainability needs to be full circle.

@@wavesnbikes Nukes aren't sustainable long term.......for ever.

Imagine trying to self-correct after spending your whole life trying to shut down the cleanest and safest form of electricity.

Sunk cost fallacy. They’ve spent too much time regarding the issue. They won’t change their minds at all.

“Locally” Clean

​@@rossr6616 What do you mean, Ross?

Fukushima enters the chat

I agree, and I grew up 10 miles from Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, and my mom still lives there

Mothers against clean power!

Idk, I got the feeling the Mothers for Nuclear strike me as the “our husbands make 7 figures working there, so don’t threaten our lifestyle” types.

She gives me single raise mom...

@@stephansaunders386 they are single mothers who work at the plant themselves

go visit a Uranium Mine some time, interview folks in nearby communities about cancers among their families. And the Mothers should visit Fukushima Prefecture

How about reprocessing it? There is a reason Argonne exists.

We still need to Conserve and waste leas before investing heavily in new generation.

Fun fact about Fukushima. The backup generators were placed in the basement of a building that quickly flooded. That never would've been approved in the US. If they would've simply been put at ground level, they could've switched out the wet filters, checked the batteries, and poof! We would never have known about it, because the problem would've lasted a half hour tops.

During Chernobyl, Soviets seeded clouds to force the fallout to drop in Belarus to prevent Scandinavian countries being hit; this resulted in thousands of Child Cancers, Leukemias and Belarus had to build many new Childrens Cancer Hospitals; I met one of these young women who survived so far, in 2010 or so, but related all the misery and death at the Hospitals. True story. Insidious nature of Nuclear fuel chain means effects are often delayed and this hidden and not prioritized.

What is going to be replacing fossil fuel and nuclear? Solar, wind farms is what California pushes, how is that working out. Government aggressively pushing Electric vehicle adoption with tax breaks. Where do you think the charging station gets the electricity to charge the EV? They are charging it from the electricity it gets from the power grid. It could be solar, nuclear, hydro, import from surrounding states... Etc. And even with the different sources California gets its power from, it is still not enough. The state is still faced with rolling blackout. The oil we get within California or the US can not be used within the country. Despite the United States ranking #1 as world's largest oil producer, we have to ship it out and trade with other countriea. Why, because oil companies refuse to update their refineries to be able to used the type of oil we get from the ground here. The federal government continual threats to oil companies about their future presence in their role in our countries power grid.

​@@davidtran4760"Solar, wind farms is what California pushes, how is that working out" Not sure what you are on about here but I will bite...we aren't having rolling blackouts...we have been having power distribution shutdowns when we are at high risk of fires and it's not state wide but much more targeted in the cuts - it has nothing to do with going to renewable sources or a generation of power problem...it's a lack of proper investment in the the maintenance, upkeep, and replacement of distribution systems by our utilities... Also, given the deaths and injuries from nuclear and even the overall total dangers from it have been over played. We can literally count all the major instances on our 10 fingers globally...the direct and indirect deaths from other generation sources is far worse and the number of accidents/incidents are also very high... Irrational fear is part of the PR problem for nuclear while just plain being irrational is the problem for renewables...

Could not agree more. These folks are soooo misguided. Their heart is in the right place though......

​@@davidtran4760 which us why it's better to stick with nuclear, and build new power plants and reactors.

ok Chicken Little whatever you say

Better to recommission them, especially now.

Lookup all the legacy PGE sites like gashouse cove in SF. The cleanup for those is way worse than Diablo or San Onofre

I have been surfing at the San onofre state beach for 6 years. Every once in a while I hike around the decommissioned plant - these guys move at a snails pace, even after storing all of the spent fuel they have been taking ages and will take a ton more time to demolish it. Once you walk around it yourself you realize how stupid it was to close it down, there is an insane amount of deep inground building and even train tracks that go into the facility. They built a MASSIVE sea wall, overall this area was never supposed to be demolished. The land will never be restored to its original

@@montytipton14​we live in the era of trashing the platform that others built for us with no plan for an improved replacement. They are even going to decommission the cooling tunnels and let them silt in. It would take 20 years, if at all, to get new tunnels permitted on the CA coast. We’ve let our leaders and regulators kneecap our state.

you never include Uranium Mining Tailings or the cancers amongst Native populations nearby.

😂 tight like how the navy recycled nuclear waste off the coast of San Francisco, sea bed ... See Farallon Islands

@@pcaetano7527 Yeah, the military gets away with crap like that. It's a little more stringent when it come to industry use on the main land. We haven't had those kinds of issues within the states even with the outdated nuclear power plants we've had.

is Greg Abbot that bad?

Some day...

2:40

Costa Ricans would die if it got below 40F.

Those canisters could fall into the ocean and never hurt a single animal. Look into how they are built. Ever wonder why those are not placed in a building? It's because they are strong enough to withstand an earthquake, a train hitting them at full speed, and a missile strike. Not kidding. Educate yourself on nuclear power. It can literally save our planet if we would let it. Mother's for peace are scared of 1950's nuclear technology. As we all should be. Diablo Canyon has received dozens of updates through the years.

​@@craigbell1047 If anything, you are not helping the pro-nuclear agenda.

The plant itself sits on an 85 foot bluff, and the casks are ~300 feet above sea level. They’re perfectly fine where they are.

Diablo Canyon is the most seismically robust place on earth. It would be the safest place to be during an earthquake.

@@kennethkaminski3438also the fact that it’s a not a subduction fault means tsunamis are very rare and not capable of the energy needed to put the reactor in ‘the splash zone’. And even if it was, it would still require every single back up system and contingency to not only fail, but be neglected for a long time before any crisis itself. Like the paradise wildfire, it’s not the electricity that was to blame, but the criminal negligence that PG&E had in maintaining a ~100 year old tower that was for decades slowly burning a hole through the massive metal fasteners themselves that weren’t supposed to be left to decay and ignored for so long.

Even Chernobyl is still cooking in the ground, but that’s inland and they can keep bearing it with more concrete and steel. Fukushima and Diablo are right on the ocean right at the water table.

You know you cannot keep bearing them with concrete and steel. Chernobyl is rapidly approaching the water table, and that will connect with the rivers nearby.

The Hanford site in Washington is on the Columbia river that is really scary as a superfund that’s out of funds

Reprocess all that fuel. Argonne exists for a reason.

I have been surfing at the San onofre state beach for 6 years. Every once in a while I hike around the decommissioned plant - these guys move at a snails pace, even after storing all of the spent fuel they have been taking ages and will take a ton more time to demolish it. Once you walk around it yourself you realize how stupid it was to close it down, there is an insane amount of deep inground building and even train tracks that go into the facility. They built a MASSIVE sea wall, overall this area was never supposed to be demolished. The land will never be restored to its original

that is accurate because grid scale storage and the holy grail are fables 😂

Are you rooting for mass destruction?

@@brendanpittman8776, yeah, it's like praying... It's either it does happen or doesn't... I don't have the ability to change what is inevitable...

“They” did, have, and are doing so. That’s why CA has the policies in place already.

i understand you mean well however the safety standards were practically ignored at Chernobyl. Modern nuclear power plants don’t carry the same risks as Chernobyl period.

Safety standards 😂 look at Fukushima

Yeah…like 30 station employees and firefighters? Over a hundred thousand died when that Chinese hydro plant collapsed. Renewable energy had killed way more people than nuclear has. It’s not even close. Nuclear is the safest and least destructive green energy source we have. It’s not ideal but the best solution until we can get true renewable energy to where it needs to be. We need to make decisions for the next generations future based on facts rather than a 70’s hyped movie or someone’s ego or false narrative.

@@pcaetano7527 That's the best part about Fukushima. It survived a 9.0 earthquake, and still even when the tsunami cause it to melt down no one was killed. Also, the Japanese have learned from this mistake, made the necessary changes to the emergency backup systems, and is getting ready to bring the plant back online.

How many people die accidentally from electrocution, building houses, car wrecks, etc? Should we stop using electricity all together because far more people die every year from it than all of the people who have died from nuclear power plant malfunctions.

The only part of your statement that is close to being correct is affordability. Yes, it's very expensive. It's also producing zero carbon energy at 92% efficiency 24 hours a day since the 80's with zero incidents releasing radiation to the environment. I didn't think people understand that one of the reasons that land is so beautiful is because that power plant is there. Efficiency of wind and solar sits at a pathetic 37% and 23% respectively. Please educate yourself on nuclear power. Look up the RU-vid channel Kyle Hill. He has a great series of science based videos of the benefits of nuclear power.

So why does France have the lowest electric rates in Europe, and the least CO² emissions if nuclear is so expensive? If reliability and dispatchability is taken into count nuclear is the lowest cost source of power.

@@stanleytolle416federal subsidies, aka Socialismo

Compared to what? Wind and solar do allot more environmental damage including thousands of years lasting toxic waste and kill more people than nuclear. So what do you suggest, petal powered generators? Even that would kill allot more people than nuclear with the out of shape dieing from heart attacks. There is no free lunch out there. What is needed is rationale comparisons and figure out the best pathway to a better future.

@@rossr6616 Wind and solar were given massive subsidies to get these systems somewhat viable. Lots of experts have pointed out that if the same developmental subsidies were given to nuclear there would be no discussions by our current time about climate change.

There actually are mother's for nuclear in Japan.

It’s the future better and cleaner for the earth