SLO Tribune - Why I continue to advocate

Heather’s Letter to the Editor, SLO Tribune

Submitted April 28, 2022, one day before Gavin Newsom’s announcement that he was reconsidering the future of Diablo.

For those who don’t know me, I’m a BIG advocate of nuclear energy. But I wasn’t always like this. I spent years excessively and sometimes annoyingly investigating my concerns after I was first hired at Diablo Canyon. My first realization didn’t occur for about six years. Nuclear is actually pretty awesome, and generates a huge amount of clean power on a small land footprint. It aligns amazingly well with both my environmental and humanitarian values. But even after that, I still had several cycles of fear and skepticism. I almost quit after Fukushima, until I realized that much of the negative consequence of the event was caused by our fear of nuclear rather than nuclear itself. Even now, I still have thoughts that cause me to stop and reevaluate. Honestly, nuclear sounds scary, and our industry has done a disservice to the public by always trying to sound convincing that “we’re so safe because…”. Which we are, but they somehow still manage to make that sound scary.

One of the biggest realizations I’ve had about nuclear is this: scary is not the same as dangerous. Every time I go down a rabbit hole after a scary-sounding leak or event or finding or whatever fill-in-the-blank, I always come back to the same conclusion - nuclear is our largest, most powerful tool to provide people with clean electricity, which has far more positive impacts than could ever be outweighed by the worst-case (even imaginary) catastrophe, or even all of them put together. Reactor operators know a lot about the history of events, and all the possibilities for more, as we study them and practice on the simulator, ad nauseam.

The more I learn about the complexities of energy and our California electric grid, the more convinced I am that we must not let irrational fears and misinformation be the reason that we dismiss 15% of our state’s clean electricity. Diablo Canyon is important, to so many issues, in so many different contexts, no matter what is important to you. Even our liberal administration is taking action to save existing nuclear plants. They know the data - when plants shut down, they are replaced primarily with fossil fuels. This is negative progress for our climate and air pollution. It is digging an even bigger hole. In California we already have HALF of our electricity supplied by natural gas, and have made little if any progress since the shutdown was announced, nine years early, in an attempt to avoid the same consequence as the shutdown of San Onofre. Its output was replaced by natural gas. Even if you are the biggest advocate of renewables, don’t you want those renewables to actually help lower emissions, and not just replace a different clean energy source?

Many people try to convince me that “the train has left the station” or that it’s “impossible” for Diablo Canyon to continue operation. I’ve studied every potential barrier, every possible wrench in the game. None of it adds up. I told someone just last week that I will not give up until they start dismantling the plant, but I immediately changed my mind. Even then, we could put equipment back, and rebuild systems. Germany can/should do that now. If they were still operating their nuclear plants, all of Europe would be in a much better position energy-wise. 

For something that is so obviously the right thing to do, why would we not go to extreme lengths, change laws, and even harder, change our minds, in order to support it? I believe we can do this. I still believe in the power of humanity to do hard things in order to protect people and the planet. Not because it’s popular or easy or obvious. Because it’s right.