Los Angeles is now being destroyed by fire. Next will be the “Big One” earthquake everyone knows is coming. And then---unless we take immediate action---Diablo Canyon’s radioactive cloud will make this region a radioactive dead zone.  My family is now besieged by four fires raging less than four miles away.  We don’t know how long our luck will hold. We are eternally grateful to the brave fire-fighters and public servants who are doing their selfless best to save us all. We are NOT grateful that Gavin Newsom has recklessly endangered us by forcing continued operation at two unsafe, decrepit nuclear power plants perched on active earthquake faults, set to pour radioactive clouds on us from just four hours north of here. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s resident site inspector---Dr. Michael Peck---after five years at Diablo warned that it cannot withstand the earthquakes we all know are coming.   In 2006 the NRC confirmed that Unit One was already seriously embrittled.  Its fragile core makes a melt-down virtually certain to cause a catastrophic explosion, shooting a lethal apocalyptic cloud right at us…and then across the state and continent.   These wildfires make clear that these city, state and federal governments---maybe NO government ANYWHERE---can begin to cope with these kinds of mega-crises.   Imagine watching our public servants trying to cope while dressed in radiation suits, knowing everything around us has been permanently contaminated. Imagine leaving all you own forever behind while racing to get yourself and your family out of here under the universal evacuation order demanded by radioactive clouds like those that decimated the downwind regions from Chernobyl and Fukushima, not to mention Santa Susanna and Three Mile Island, Windscale and Kyshtym. Pre-empting such a catastrophe was a major motivation for the 2018 plan to phase out the two Diablo nukes in 2024 and 2025, That landmark blueprint was crafted over a two-year period with hundreds of meetings, scores of hearings involving the best and brightest in energy, the economy, the ecology and the hard engineering realities of aging atomic power reactors. It was signed by the then-Governor (Jerry Brown), Lieutenant Governor (Gavin Newsom), state legislature, state regulatory agencies, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, plant owner (PG&E), labor unions, local governments, environmental groups and many more, .   The economic and energy security goals of this plan have been far exceeded by advances in renewable generation and battery storage.  California now regularly gets 100% of its electricity from solar, wind and geothermal.  Battery back-up capabilities exceed Diablo’s capacity by a factor of four or more.  Its inflexible baseload productions unfortunately interferes with far cheaper renewables filling our grid. The grid’s most serious blackout threats now come from disruptive malfunctions and potential disasters at Diablo Canyon.  All this has been well known since 2018, when Newsom signed the Diablo agreement. The phase-out proceeded smoothly for four years, largely exceeding expectations. But in 2022, Newsom strongarmed the legislature into trashing the phase-out plan.  His Public Utilities Commission decimated the statewide rate structure, costing our solar industry, billions in revenues and at least 17,000 jobs. Instead Newsom fed PG&E about $1.4 billion in public subsidies and $11 billion in over-market charges to keep Diablo running through 2030. Neither the NRC nor state nor PG&E have done the necessary tests to guarantee Diablo’s safety, refusing to re-test for embrittlement even though such defects forced the NRC to shut the Yankee Rowe reactor in 1991. Diablo has no private liability insurance.  Should it irradiate Los Angeles, NONE of us can expect compensation.   So as we shudder amidst the horrors of this firestorm, we know that our loss of life, health and property will be orders of magnitude---literally, infinitely---more devastating when, by quake or error, the reactors at Diablo Canyon melt and explode. Responsibility for this needless, unconscionable threat lies strictly with Gavin Newsom.  There is no sane economic, electric supply or common sense reason for him to impose this gamble on us.    Governor Newsom: NOTHING can make public sense of this radioactive throw of the dice.   We respectfully beg, request, demand, beseech that you honor the sacred word you gave in 2018 to phase out the Diablo Canyon atomic reactors.  

 

As we see the devastation engulfing us, and the inability of government to make it right, there is zero mystery as to why these nukes must shut.    NOW!!! -----------------------------------------------------------Harvey Wasserman lives in the San Fernando Valley.  He co-hosts the “California Solartopia Show” at KPFK/Pacifica-90.7FM.