NEWS Nuclear Plant ‘Doesn’t Fit’ In The Future Grid, Utility Executive SaysDecember 7, 2016

From Forbes Mag­a­zine, Decem­ber 7, 2016

Arti­cle link.

Pacif­ic Gas & Elec­tric Co. decid­ed to close its Dia­blo Canyon Nuclear Pow­er Plant because its base­load power—often cit­ed as nuclear’s best asset—doesn’t fit into the dynam­ic grid Cal­i­for­nia is devel­op­ing, a PG&E exec­u­tive said today at the U.S. Ener­gy Stor­age Sum­mit in San Francisco.

Steve Mal­night, PG&E’s senior vice pres­i­dent for reg­u­la­to­ry affairs, was speak­ing specif­i­cal­ly of mar­ket con­di­tions in Cal­i­for­nia, but many con­sid­er Cal­i­for­nia a trail­blaz­er for the nation on ener­gy and cli­mate issues, so his com­ments will res­onate in the ongo­ing debate over nuclear’s role in a clean-ener­gy future.

“Con­sid­er­ing a shut­down was a dif­fi­cult deci­sion for us,” Mal­night said, “but as we real­ly looked at the chang­ing dynam­ics in Cal­i­for­nia, giv­en the choic­es we’ve made in Cal­i­for­nia, and the pol­i­cy direc­tion in Cal­i­for­nia, there was a clear recog­ni­tion that Dia­blo was not going to be a good fit for the future needs of the system.”

Fig­ure cap­tion: Aer­i­al view of the Dia­blo Canyon Nuclear Pow­er Plant, which sits on the edge of the Pacif­ic Ocean at Avi­la Beach in San Luis Obis­po Coun­ty, Cal­i­for­nia. (Pho­to by MARK RALSTON/​AFP/​Getty Images)

Nuclear advo­cates argue that nuclear plants can pro­vide reli­able pow­er to bal­ance the vari­abil­i­ty of renew­ables, but base­load pow­er turned out to be Dia­blo’s Achilles’ heel.

“With 50 per­cent renew­ables on the sys­tem, the idea of a large base­load gen­er­a­tor that runs pret­ty much all the time, every day, 24 hours a day, just doesn’t have as good a fit to the mar­ket con­di­tions we expect to see,” Mal­night said.

PG&E announced this sum­mer it would close Dia­blo’s two reac­tors after their oper­at­ing licens­es expire in Novem­ber 2024 and August 2025, replac­ing the plant with a suite of green­house-gas-free tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing renew­ables, ener­gy effi­cien­cy, and ener­gy stor­age. Today, Mal­night said half that job is already done.

“When you looked at the oth­er half that need­ed to be replaced, base­load gen­er­a­tion just wasn’t a good fit. The plant would be turn­ing on and turn­ing off all the time. And in a mar­ket­place with real­ly abun­dant resources in the mid­dle of the day, that’s not a good way to run a nuclear plant.”

PG&E intends to “buy” the renew­ables, effi­cien­cy, and stor­age that will replace the plant soon, so that they’re in place before it clos­es. He told the audi­ence of ener­gy-stor­age inter­ests that the stor­age pur­chase would have been nec­es­sary even if Dia­blo stayed open.

“We antic­i­pate we’re going to need to bring on more stor­age onto the sys­tem to help inte­grate those diverse resources. Which, by the way we would have need­ed if we kept Dia­blo run­ning, too.”

Mal­night did acknowl­edge the seem­ing irony of clos­ing a nuclear plant dur­ing a fran­tic quest to devel­op an ener­gy sys­tem free of car­bon emissions.

“As a com­pa­ny we’re real­ly com­mit­ted to achiev­ing the state’s—and hope­ful­ly the world’s—ambition for car­bon reduc­tion, and Dia­blo is a vital resource for us today in our exist­ing fleet for how we are able to deliv­er as much clean ener­gy as we do.” But, he said, it proved too awk­ward a piece of the puz­zle in an ener­gy future based on a diverse, dynam­ic, decen­tral­ized set of resources.

PG&E’s deci­sion sup­ports an argu­ment artic­u­lat­ed by Berke­ley Ener­gy Pro­fes­sor Daniel Kam­men in a debate this sum­mer [to watch the debate, click here] with for­mer Ener­gy Sec­re­tary Steven Chu: “The dra­mat­ic ramp up in solar result­ed in the dra­mat­ic real­iza­tion that a diverse, decen­tral­ized sys­tem can pro­vide the same crit­i­cal fea­tures that we think about with a base­load high­ly cen­tral­ized sys­tem,” said Kammen.