"Nuclear power’s last stand in California: Will Diablo Canyon die?"

As reported by David R. Baker in the San Francisco Chronicle, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) has gotten cold feet about its 2009 application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a 20-year license extension at its Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.

Diablo is encircled by earthquake fault lines. PG&E is still reeling from a natural gas pipeline explosion in 2010, which killed nine residents in San Bruno, CA. PG&E has focused on repairing its image after the fatal explosion, not on re-licensing Diablo.

'We've got a lot on our plates, and we just don't need to take on another big public issue right now,' said Tony Earley, PG&E Corp.'s CEO."

(Earley was CEO at Detroit Edison until 2011. He left that utility amidst its application to build a new reactor, Fermi 3, in southeast MI. Beyond Nuclear and environmental coalition allies have been fighting the Fermi 3 proposal since 2008.)

Especially in light of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, and its ongoing radioactivity releases into the Pacific Ocean, PG&E can expect a fight, if it attempts to extend Diablo's operating licenses, from groups such as San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, Friends of the Earth, Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, and others.

The article quotes a long time watchdog:

“It should be illegal,” said Linda Seeley, 71, a retired midwife who in the 1980s was arrested twice during mass demonstrations at Diablo’s gates. “They’re playing with fire, and the people who will get burned are the people who live here.”

The article highlights the role Diablo's lack of cooling towers, and consequent massive impact on aquatic life, will play in the license extension fight to come. Beyond Nuclear's Paul Gunter and Linda Gunter have reported on such impacts at Diablo in their report, Licensed to Kill.

With the closure of San Onofre 2 & 3 in southern CA in 2013, and the previous closures of CA's other atomic reactors, Diablo represents "nuclear power's last stand in California."

Where is America’s cyberdefense plan?

That is the online title of an op-ed by Ted Koppel appearing in the Washington Post (the hardcopy headline reads "Before the cyber-blackout"). Koppel, best known for hosting the ABC news program “Nightline” from 1980 to 2005, is the author of the new book, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, a Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath.

The op-ed raises the specter of a power outage lasting not hours, or days, but weeks, or months, due to a coordinated cyber-attack on the vulnerable U.S. electricity grid.

But the op-ed does not address what this would mean at the 100 still operating atomic reactors across the country, and even at the numerous atomic reactors permanently shutdown. Even if operating atomic reactors were able to power down and shutdown safely during a power outage, their thermally hot cores would still have to be cooled for several days, or longer, before cold shutdown was reached, or else risk melting down. Although high-level radioactive waste storage pools would have a longer fuse -- days or even weeks before boiling would expose irradiated nuclear fuel to air, and risk a catastrophic fire -- the pools are not even required to be connected to emergency diesel generators, as reactors are. More.