Tag Archives: Diablo Canyon

What to do about Diablo Canyon?

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The debate over whether to close Diablo Canyon has resurfaced. The California Public Utilities Commission, which support from the Legislature, decided in 2018 to close Diablo by 2025 rather than proceed to relicensing. PG&E applied in 2016 to retire the plant rather than relicense due to the high costs that would make the energy uneconomic. (I advised the Joint CCAs in this proceeding.)

Now a new study from MIT and Stanford finds potential savings and emission reductions from continuing operation. (MIT in particular has been an advocate for greater use of nuclear power.) Others have written opinion articles on either side of the issue. I wrote the article below in the Davis Enterprise addressing this issue. (It was limited to 900 words so I couldn’t cover everything.)

IT’S OK TO CLOSE DIABLO CANYON NUCLEAR PLANT
A previous column (by John Mott-Smith) asked whether shutting down the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant is risky business if we don’t know what will replace the electricity it produces. John’s friend Richard McCann offered to answer his question. This is a guest column, written by Richard, a universally respected expert on energy, water and environmental economics.

John Mott-Smith asked several questions about the future of nuclear power and the upcoming closure of PG&E’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant in 2025. His main question is how are we going to produce enough reliable power for our economy’s shift to electricity for cars and heating. The answers are apparent, but they have been hidden for a variety of reasons.
I’ve worked on electricity and transportation issues for more than three decades. I began my career evaluating whether to close Sacramento Municipal Utility District’s Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Station and recently assessed the cost to relicense and continue operations of Diablo after 2025.
Looking first at Diablo Canyon, the question turns almost entirely on economics and cost. When the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station closed suddenly in 2012, greenhouse gas emissions rose statewide the next year, but then continued a steady downward trend. We will again have time to replace Diablo with renewables.
Some groups focus on the risk of radiation contamination, but that was not a consideration for Diablo’s closure. Instead, it was the cost of compliance with water quality regulations. The power plant currently uses ocean water for cooling. State regulations required changing to a less impactful method that would have cost several billion dollars to install and would have increased operating costs. PG&E’s application to retire the plant showed the costs going forward would be at least 10 to 12 cents per kilowatt-hour.
In contrast, solar and wind power can be purchased for 2 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour depending on configuration and power transmission. Even if new power transmission costs 4 cents per kilowatt-hour and energy storage adds another 3 cents, solar and wind units cost about 3 cents, which totals at the low end of the cost for Diablo Canyon.
What’s even more exciting is the potential for “distributed” energy resources, where generation and power management occurs locally, even right on the customers’ premises rather than centrally at a power plant. Rooftop solar panels are just one example—we may be able to store renewable power practically for free in our cars and trucks.
Automobiles are parked 95% of the time, which means that an electric vehicle (EV) could store solar power at home or work during the day and for use at night. When we get to a vehicle fleet that is 100% EVs, we will have more than 30 times the power capacity that we need today. This means that any individual car likely will only have to use 10% of its battery capacity to power a house, leaving plenty for driving the next day.
With these opportunities, rooftop and community power projects cost 6 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour compared with Diablo’s future costs of 10 to 12 cents.
Distributed resources add an important local protection as well. These resources can improve reliability and resilience in the face of increasing hazards created by climate change. Disruptions in the distribution wires are the cause of more than 95% of customer outages. With local generation, storage, and demand management, many of those outages can be avoided, and electricity generated in our own neighborhoods can power our houses during extreme events. The ad that ran during the Olympics for Ford’s F-150 Lightning pick-up illustrates this potential.
Opposition to this new paradigm comes mainly from those with strong economic interests in maintaining the status quo reliance on large centrally located generation. Those interests are the existing utilities, owners, and builders of those large plants plus the utility labor unions. Unfortunately, their policy choices to-date have led to extremely high rates and necessitate even higher rates in the future. PG&E is proposing to increase its rates by another third by 2024 and plans more down the line. PG&E’s past mistakes, including Diablo Canyon, are shown in the “PCIA” exit fee that [CCA] customers pay—it is currently 20% of the rate. Yolo County created VCEA to think and manage differently than PG&E.
There may be room for nuclear generation in the future, but the industry has a poor record. While the cost per kilowatt-hour has gone down for almost all technologies, even fossil-fueled combustion turbines, that is not true for nuclear energy. Several large engineering firms have gone bankrupt due to cost overruns. The global average cost has risen to over 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. Small modular reactors (SMR) may solve this problem, but we have been promised these are just around the corner for two decades now. No SMR is in operation yet.
Another problem is management of radioactive waste disposal and storage over the course of decades, or even millennia. Further, reactors fail on a periodic basis and the cleanup costs are enormous. The Fukuyama accident cost Japan $300 to $750 billion. No other energy technology presents such a degree of catastrophic failure. This liability needs to be addressed head on and not ignored or dismissed if the technology is to be pursued.

We’ve already paid for Diablo Canyon

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As I wrote last week, PG&E is proposing that a share of Diablo Canyon nuclear plant output be allocated to community choice aggregators (CCAs) as part of the resolution of issues related to the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), Resource Adequacy (RA) and Power Charge Indifference Adjustment (PCIA) rulemakings. While the allocation makes sense for CCAs, it does not solve the problem that PG&E ratepayers are paying for Diablo Canyon twice.

In reviewing the second proposed settlement on PG&E costs in 1994, we took a detailed look at PG&E’s costs and revenues at Diablo. Our analysis revealed a shocking finding.

Diablo Canyon was infamous for increasing in cost by more than ten-fold from the initial investment to coming on line. PG&E and ratepayer groups fought over whether to allow $2.3 billion dollars.  The compromise in 1988 was to essentially shift the risk of cost recovery from ratepayers to PG&E through a power purchase agreement modeled on the Interim Standard Offer Number 4 contract offered to qualifying facilities (but suspended as oversubscribed in 1985).

However, the contract terms were so favorable and rich to PG&E, that Diablo costs negatively impacted overall retail rates. These costs were a key contributing factor that caused industrial customers to push for deregulation and restructuring. As an interim solution in 1995 in anticipation of forthcoming restructuring, PG&E and ratepayer groups arrived at a new settlement that moved Diablo Canyon back into PG&E’s regulated ratebase, earning the utilities allowed return on capital. PG&E was allowed to keep 100% of profit collected between 1988 and 1995. The subsequent 1996 settlement made some adjustments but arrived at essentially the same result. (See Decision 97-05-088.)

While PG&E had borne the risks for seven years, that was during the plant startup and its earliest years of operation.  As we’ve seen with San Onofre NGS and other nuclear plants, operational reliability is most at risk late in the life of the plant. PG&E’s originally took on the risk of recovering its entire investment over the entire life of the plant.  The 1995 settlement transferred the risk for recovering costs over the remaining life of the plant back to ratepayers. In addition, PG&E was allowed to roll into rate base the disputed $2.3 billion. This shifted cost recovery back to the standard rate of depreciation over the 40 year life of the NRC license. In other words, PG&E had done an end-run on the original 1988 settlement AND got to keep the excess profits.

The fact that PG&E accelerated its investment recovery over the first seven years and then shifted recovery risk to ratepayers implies that PG&E should be allowed to recover only the amount that it would have earned at a regulated return under the original 1988 settlement. This is equal to the discounted net present value of the net income earned by Diablo Canyon, over both the periods of the 1988 (PPA) and 1995 settlements.

In 1996, we calculated what PG&E should be allowed to recover in the settlement given this premise.  We assumed that PG&E would be allowed to recover the disputed $2.3 billion because it had taken on that risk in 1988, but the net income stream should be discounted at the historic allowed rate of return over the seven year period.  Based on these assumptions, PG&E had recovered its entire $7.7 billion investment by October 1997, just prior to the opening of the restructured market in March 1998.  In other words, PG&E shareholders were already made whole by 1998 as the cost recovery for Diablo was shifted back to ratepayers.  Instead the settlement agreement has caused ratepayers to pay twice for Diablo Canyon.

PG&E has made annual capital additions to continue operation at Diablo Canyon since then and a regulated return is allowed under the regulatory compact.  Nevertheless, the correct method for analyzing the potential loss to PG&E shareholders from closing Diablo is to first subtract $5.1 billion from the plant in service, reducing the current ratebase to capital additions incurred since 1998. This would reduces the sunk costs that are to be recovered in rates from $31 to $3 per megawatt-hour.

Note that PG&E shareholders and bondholders have earned a weighted return of approximately 10% annually on this $5.1 billion since 1998. The compounded present value of that excess return was $18.1 billion by 2014 earned by PG&E.

CCAs don’t undermine their mission by taking a share of Diablo Canyon

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Northern California community choice aggregators (CCAs) are considering whether to accept an offer from PG&E to allocate a proportionate share of its “large carbon-free” generation as a credit against the power charge indifference adjustment (PCIA) exit fee.  The allocation would include a share of Diablo Canyon power. The allocation for 2019 and 2020; an extension of this allocation is being discussed on the PCIA rulemaking.

The proposal faces opposition from anti-nuclear and local community activists who point to the policy adopted by many CCAs not to accept any nuclear power in their portfolios. However, this opposition is misguided for several reasons, some of which are discussed in this East Bay Community Energy staff report.

  • The CCAs already receive and pay for nuclear generation as part of the mix of “unspecified” power that the CCAs buy through the California Independent System Operator (CAISO). The entire cost of Diablo Canyon is included in the Total Portfolio Cost used to calculate the PCIA. The CCAs receive a “market value” credit against this generation, but the excess cost of recovering the investment in Diablo Canyon (for which PG&E is receiving double payment based on calculations I made in 1996) is recovered through the PCIA. The CCAs can either continue to pay for Diablo through the PCIA without receiving any direct benefits, or they can at least gain some benefits and potentially lower their overall costs. (CCAs need to be looking at their TOTAL generation costs, not just their individual portfolio, when resource planning.)
  • Diablo Canyon is already scheduled to close Unit 1 in 2024 and Unit 2 in 2025 after a contentious proceeding. This allocation is unlikely to change this decision as PG&E has said that the relicensed plant would cost in excess of $100 per megawatt-hour, well in excess of its going market value. I have written extensively here about how costly nuclear power has been and has yet to show that it can reduce those costs. Unless the situation changes significantly, Diablo Canyon will close then.
  • Given that Diablo is already scheduled for closure, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is unlikely to revisit this decision. But even so, a decision to either reopen A.16-08-006 or to open a new rulemaking or application would probably take close to a year, so the proceeding probably would not open until almost 2021. The actual proceeding would take up to a year, so now we are to 2022 before an actual decision. PG&E would have to take up to a year to plan the closure at that point, which then takes us to 2023. So at best the plant closes a year earlier than currently scheduled. In addition, PG&E still receives the full payments for its investments and there is likely no capital additions avoided by the early closure, so the cost savings would be minimal.