Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Diablo Canyon and What To Do About It

Rally for Diablo Canyon
Mothers for Nuclear,, Californians for Green Nuclear Power and others
June 17, 2016
San Luis Obispo
Photo from Californians for Green Nuclear Power
The Announcement and What To Do

Today, PG&E announced that it would not apply for a license renewal for Diablo Canyon, but would close the plant by 2025. The New York Times article this morning: California's Last Nuclear Power Plant Could Close.

 IF this agreement goes through, Diablo Canyon will stay open for another eight years before it closes.  Eight years is not tomorrow. This is not the time to despair and scuttle the ship.  Now is the time to take action! There are things we can do to help our nuclear plants survive.

Right now, we can do two things:  Sign a Petition and Make a Donation. I have done both.

Sign a Petition to the White House

A petition to the White House requests that the special benefits of nuclear power be recognized by federal government policy. The petition has 13,000 signatures, and needs 100,000 to get a response from the White House.  Sign it here to Keep America's Nuclear Power Plants Working for US!

Please sign it and circulate it!

Make A Donation to the March for Environmental Hope

California pro-nuclear groups are marching from San Francisco and Oakland to Sacramento,  in the March for Environmental Hope.  They will publicize the importance of nuclear power for California, and they will attend a meeting of the California Lands Commission. The Commission will be holding a crucial vote about Diablo Canyon.

The March is sponsored by Mothers for Nuclear, Save Diablo Canyon, and Environmental Progress.  Other groups will be marching with them: Californians for Green Nuclear Power and Thorium Energy Alliance.  

The marchers in California are doing this for all of us, for everyone who believes in nuclear energy as the safe, clean energy of the future.  Help them!  You can donate here, and help pay campground fees and so forth for the marchers.

 Commentary

Three excellent articles, worth reading:

Rod Adams at Forbes: NRDC Announces PG&E Has Agreed to Kill Diablo Canyon
James Conca at Forbes: Pro-Nuclear March In San Francisco to Protest Closing of Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant
Michael Shellenberger at Environmental Progress: Why Diablo Canyon Will Live--and Why the Corrupt PGE-IBEW-NRDC Proposal Will Fail

And, just for fun, to see some of the stakes in this particular case, from the San Diego Times Tribune yesterday: Heat wave raises worries about power outages. To quote the article:

Rotating outages result when utilities, largely due to gas issues, don't have enough supply to meet demand.
"We would tell the utilities to turn off the power to a substation...until.... we can go back to balancing supply and demand in real time," Greenlee (of California ISO) said.
Outages can last from 30 to 90 minutes.
But Greenlee said as of Monday afternoon, the system was holding up.

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In other words:

Sign!
Donate!



1 comment:

Travelogue for the Universe said...

Vermont is suffering with loss of Vermont Yankee. A Fracked gas pipeline from Canada, Vibrating big turbines, subsidized solar fields, extension cord in Lake Champlain. Oh, and will the Addison County, Vermont pipeline become electrified where in close proximity to big power lines? Nuclear phobia feeds the masses while big electric companies will need more $$$ I signed petition. M