The behavior of California’s ruling class has been the cause of much astonishment. Recently, in its infinite wisdom, a group of California regulators decreed that by 2035, the sale of all gasoline and diesel-fueled motor vehicles will be banned in the state. All new car purchases must be electric, no matter how unaffordable they are or how unprepared California’s infrastructure is to accommodate them.
Recently, amid an unprecedented heat wave that is straining California’s power grid to the breaking point, the management of said grid asked electric car owners to avoid charging their vehicles during peak power demand periods.
If those two competing mandates seem crazy to you, you are not alone. Fortunately, there is a solution to California’s power woes. In fact, that solution presents itself with the rare sensible decision that Sacramento recently took to extend the life of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant until at least 2030. Someone apparently recognized that eliminating a tenth of California’s power capacity without a ready way to replace it is a bad idea.
For some years, California has embarked on a headlong effort to switch the state’s power grid to renewable sources, such as solar and wind. The reasoning was that if the state eliminates plants that run on carbon-emitting coal and natural gas, California will be doing its part to combat what some believe is an existential threat to the planet.
But if the goal is to eliminate carbon dioxide, California’s decommissioning of carbon-free nuclear power plants has been puzzling. Nuclear power plants do not emit greenhouse gases. Unlike solar and wind, nuclear power runs 24/7 without the need for complicated energy storage technology.
Those who object to nuclear power bring up the accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima as reasons to avoid reliance on that technology. However, each of those accidents had specific causes that every other nuclear power plant has avoided. Nuclear power is actually safer than fossil fuel power, considering the health and environmental effects of emissions.
The problem of storing nuclear waste, such as spent fuel rods, is both technically difficult and politically controversial. However, one solution to the problem is to recycle the waste into nuclear fuel. The United States does not recycle nuclear waste thanks to a 1977 decision by President Jimmy Carter, but Great Britain, France, and Japan do so with considerable success.
In the meantime, a company called TerraPower is developing a new kind of nuclear power plant using a technology called Natrium, according to CNBC. Natrium nuclear power plants use liquid sodium rather than water as a cooling agent. The technology is less prone to catastrophic meltdowns than conventional nuclear power. The power plants produce less nuclear waste. The first Natrium nuclear power plant is due to start generating power in Kemmerer, Wyoming, in 2028.
The TerraPower technology has challenges, some of them regulatory, some of them technical. The company will have to jump through many regulatory hoops to get approval for the Kemmerer plant. The U.S. is not yet able to enrich uranium sufficiently to power a Natrium nuclear power plant on an industrial scale. This power plant will generate 345 megawatts of power, roughly one-third of the Diablo Canyon plant’s capacity, though it can surge to 500 megawatts during peak demand periods.
Finally, the Kemmerer nuclear power plant will cost $4 billion to build. TerraPower hopes to get the cost down to $1 billion for subsequent power plants.
Nuclear power plants, especially those built with newer technology, are the solution to California’s energy crisis. The technology may also be a political winner for California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Newsom, it is rumored, would like to run for president in 2024. Currently, the case for his candidacy is very weak, considering all of California’s self-inflicted woes. But if Newsom embraces nuclear power and starts adding it to California’s grid, the argument for electing him president becomes considerably less absurd.
Mark Whittington, who frequently writes about space and politics, is the author of Why is America Going Back to the Moon? He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.
