Diablo Canyon in line for $1.1B in DOE’s CNC funding

$1.1 billion in funding from the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act's $6 billion Civil Nuclear Credit program has been conditionally awarded by the DOE to PG&E for use in relicensing and extending the life of Diablo Canyon, whose two reactors had been slated for retirement in 2024 and 2025.

As such, these funds will be used exactly as intended by the Federal Government's Civil Nuclear Credit program, to support “safe and reliable” carbon-free nuclear energy facilities, preserve some 1,500 high-paying jobs and reduce carbon emissions, the DOE said.

Diablo Canyon, a 2,240 MW nuclear power plant applied for the funding soon after the California Legislature voted to allow the plant to continue operating as the best way to prevent worsening grid instability, blackouts and increasing carbon emissions from expanded use of natural gas. PG&E's application, which won the support of California's governor, Gavin Newsom and his staff, passed through the first round of vetting done by the DOE on applications received. Unfortunately, Michigan's already closed Palisades plant, despite support from Governor Gretchen Whitmer, did not receive conditional approval for funding.

“This is a critical step toward ensuring that our domestic nuclear fleet will continue providing reliable and affordable power to Americans as the nation’s largest source of clean electricity,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm.

Patti Poppe, CEO of PG&E, said in a news release that the federal decision is “another very positive step forward to extend the operating life of Diablo Canyon Power Plant to ensure electrical reliability for all Californians.”

Nuclear power provides 50% of the carbon-free electricity in the U.S., but shifting energy markets and other economic factors have resulted in the early closures of 13 commercial reactors, DOE said. The plant shutdowns have led to an increase in carbon emissions, poorer air quality and the loss of thousands of high-paying jobs, the agency said.

The first Civil Nuclear Credit award cycle set as its priority reactors facing the “most imminent threat of closure,” DOE said. Applications are limited to reactors that announced intentions to shut due to economic factors. The second cycle will include reactors projected to close in the next four years.

Read more at UtilityDive: DOE conditionally awards PG&E’s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant $1.1B to forestall shutdown, by Stephen Singer, published November 21, 2022.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Capital reallocation, Carbon emissions, Carbon markets, Climate change, Energy abundance, History Timeline, History-making, LINKS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear financing, Nuclear-inclusive energy policy, Public companies, Solving climate, Zero emission energy

October 4, 2022

Is nuclear energy poised for an ESG-fueled comeback?

In a world of rising energy insecurity, climate change and skyrocketing energy prices, nuclear energy might be one of the only sectors feeling more bullish than ever.

"Once seen as an energy option on its last legs, the nuclear industry has had several victories lately. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a bill intended to keep the Diablo Canyon plant running past its expected retirement date, and Germany plans to keep two aging nuclear plants available until at least April.

The energy security arguments for those plants in some ways mirror those of the 1970s, which led to a huge nuclear build-out. Then, it was skyrocketing gasoline prices and anti-market actions from Middle Eastern oil exporters creating energy insecurity. Today, similar factors are at play, with Russia now causing supply concerns and natural gas prices spiking. There’s also the ticking tock of climate change making zero-carbon nuclear particularly attractive in a world racing to cut emissions.

Supporters say there’s enough momentum for a nuclear renaissance that would catapult the industry into a greater role in the world’s clean energy future. Newsom backed an effort to keep the Diablo Canyon plant open until 2030, for example, as climate-linked wildfires and heat waves showed it would be tough for California to lose a big zero-carbon power source in the coming years as it strives to slash emissions.

But the nuclear industry has long voiced concerns over what it sees as hesitancy and unfair treatment in the world of climate finance and ESG, the movement to include environmental, social and governance issues in investing principles.

“Nuclear should be getting credit for ESG, and I’d like to tell you that it’s that simple, but it’s not,” said Maria Korsnick, CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute industry group, during an NEI event in June. “There’s some financial institutions that look at nuclear and look at ESG, and they struggle to say that nuclear actually supports it.”

Read more at EnergyWire: Is nuclear energy poised for an ESG-fueled comeback?, by Nico Portuondo, published October 4, 2022.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Capital reallocation, Carbon emissions, Carbon markets, Climate change, Energy abundance, History-making, LINKS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear financing, Nuclear-inclusive energy policy, Public companies, Solving climate, Zero emission energy

September 1, 2022

California Legislators Vote To Save Diablo Canyon

California's legislature, by nearly unanimous votes in both the Assembly and the Senate, agreed with Governor Gavin Newsom, to extend the operating life of Diablo Canyon. This was the result of multiple converging factors, the most important of which was that the closure would have worsened the already fragile state of the California energy grid, maing black-outs far more likely. But, behind this looming awareness were many other factors influencing public opinion and political pressure, which include pronuclear advocacy, scientific concerns about climate change, shifting political winds in the face of Russia's invastion of Ukraine and leadership from the Biden Administration. There will be many efforts to understand what tipped the political weights in favor of saving Diablo Canyon, and not all will be correct, but the good news for is that rationality prevailed in California, despite concerted anti-nuclear pressures.

Climate change and Russia's invasion of the Ukraine are looming backdrops to this stunning victory. Yet, most directly, the basis of the success comes down to the fact that Governor Newsom himself became convinced that delaying the closure of Diablo Canyon was both the right thing to do and was politically feasible. It isn't clear exactly how he arrived at this conclusion but it is certain that his political weight made it happen. What caused the politics to shift? Possibly, Newsom found sufficient political cover and acceptable polling data from the fact that Illinois Governor Pritzker and Michigan Governor Whitmer, both Democrats, took action to protect their nuclear power.

Nevertheless, coming out in favor of extending the life of Diablo Canyon, was enormously risky and difficult for Governor Newsom, as it involved making a 180 degree shift from his prior position of working to ensure that Diablo got closed. Yet, with state policy experts warning that the closure would cause blackouts and likely deaths as a result, Governor Newsom bit the bullet and did the right thing.

There were a multitude of pronuclear individuals and groups providing support and political cover for this decision. As far back as 2015, Michael Shellenberger and his organizations, The Breakthrough Institute and Environmental Progress, argued on behalf of nuclear power. Shellenberger split out of TBI, a think tank, in order to engage in more active pronuclear advocacy. He and a group of younger activists organized and held the first pronuclear rally, a three day protest and parade against the closure of Diablo Canyon. From there, numerous groups were formed which contributed advocacy towards the support of nuclear power: Californians for Green Nuclear Power, Generation Atomic, Mothers for Nuclear, Climate Coalition, Rethink Nuclear, Nuclear New York, Protect Nuclear NOW and many others.

Meanwhile, filmmakers Robert Stone and Dave Schumacher produced luscious documentaries that challenged the status quo attitudes about nuclear power. Their films, Pandora's Promise and The New Fire respectively brought new insights into our understanding of both the facts about nuclear power and the reality about the concerted and often nefarious efforts to besmirch nuclear's reputation. These films had surprising reach and helped soften widespread knee-jerk antinuclear reactions. Then, the academics from Stanford and MIT played their parts and issued a report providing evidence that closing Diablo Canyon would cost the state $21 billion.

While, no single person or group can take sole credit for this victory, there was little discernable action until the joining of Isabelle Boemeke to the campaign. Representing the younger generation and signing up to support Diablo Canyon as the first "nuclear influencer," Isabelle served as the spark to ignite public attention to the support that Diablo Canyon had as our largest source of clean energy, and helped turn the tide in favor of saving it. Under the handle "Isodope," she adroitly leverage social media tech platforms, including Instagram, TicTok and Twitter, to send highly stylized, informative and compellingly snarky videos to a broad spectrum of followers. She also acted on the momentum garnered by the Stanford/MIT report to organize an in-person rally in San Luis Obispo, complete with support from local politicians and residents. That turned to be very successful and she then parlayed that success to corral scientific experts to weigh in with a direct letter appeal to Governor Newsom.

Finally, with the introduction of the Biden Administration's Civil Nuclear Credit program and its offer of up to $6 billion in support of saving aging plants, Governor Newsom could no longer afford to ignore the reality that saving Diablo Canyon could help him avoid energy embarrassment and liability from the rash of civil lawsuits that would have followed black-out related deaths.

There are now many articles coming out with their assessments of the factors that enabled this success. None capture the whole picture, which spans much more engagement, work and adroit advocacy in California, across the US and even internationally, that contributed to making ignoring reality of nuclear impossible for Gov. Newsom.

Read the Forbes article, In Big Win For Nuclear, California Legislators Vote To Save Diablo Canyon, by Robert Bryce, September 1, 2022 here. There are many other articles reporting on this significant achievement but we can't list them all here.

Published by Nucleation Capital in 100% Renewables, Anti-nuclear campaign, Carbon emissions, Climate change, Climate mayhem, Environmental support for nuclear, Government support, History Timeline, History-making, LINKS, Nuclear-inclusive energy policy, Politicians supporting nuclear, Pro-nuclear campaign, Solving climate, Zero emission energy

April 29, 2022

Newsom tells L.A. Times editors that he’s reconsidering the Diablo Canyon closure

Governor Gavin Newsom, a consumate politician, finally is willing to declare his support for Diablo Canyon, something he has long refused to do. As the L.A. Times reports in an article titled California promised to close its last nuclear plant. Now Newsom is reconsidering, Newsom has chosen to come out publicly with support for saving Diablo Canyon. It is doubtful that Newsom has suddenly "seen the light" about nuclear. More likely, he's seen recent polling showing that a majority of Democrats and Republican understand the importance of nuclear power for addressing the goal of reliable clean energy in the absence of fossil fuels.

It appears that Governor Newsom is now working to delay the closure of Diablo Canyon. While this will disappoint his fossil fuel donors and those touting renewables (which is a majority of environmental organizations of all stripes), it is definitely the right thing to do.

There are numerous reasons for Newsom having finally found the political will to disrupt what many in California consider a settled matter. As the article mentions, the reality is that shutting Diablo would cause the forthcoming energy shortages that are already projected to be far worse. Back in August 2020, hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses lost power during some of the hotest and smokiest days of the year, and the state narrowly avoided even worse blackouts a few weeks later. Now CALISO is projecting increased grid fragility going forward, even without shuttering Diablo Canyon, given increasing heat waves, more aggressive forest fires and reduced hydropower supply, as a result of California's extended drought.

Additionally, the DOE recently announced their Civil Nuclear Credit program and are now dangling some $6 billion that is earmarked for at-risk nuclear power plants. Gavin recognizes that such funds could help underwrite some face-saving upgrades to the plant, possibly even to the once-through-cooling (OTC) system, the imposed costs of which by the State Water Resources Board were ostensibly the basis for PG&E finally giving up on their plan to re-license the plant.

Then there the small matter of the upcoming election and a Democratic primary where the leading contenders for Gavin's place on the ticket were nearly all expressing strong pronuclear positions and calling Gavin out for his apparent retrograde or donor-induced political ignorance of climate science.

Needless to say, that the joint Stanford/MIT report providing evidence that closing Diablo Canyon would cost the state $21 billion, which was followed by a pronuclear rally in San Luis Obispo, itself followed by the very public letter from 79 high-level scientists, academics and business leader urging Governor Newsom to protect this existing (and paid for) asset, was a triple punch that probably alarmed everyone that he was being seen as being on the wrong side of science.

While the article suggests that Newsom is simply in process of "reconsidering," in fact the word on the street is that a deal has been done to preserve Diablo Canyon, although what that is remains unknown, as no information has yet been officially issued. Needless to say, these are very encouraging signs. Nucleation Capital supports protecting Diablo Canyon, Michigan's Palisades plant and other at-risk plants.

Read the L.A. Times article, California promised to close its last nuclear plant. Now Newsom is reconsidering, by Sammy Roth, April 29, 2022 here. To learn more about what you can do to support Diablo Canyon, see the Save Diablo Canyon campaign at Climate Coalition.

Published by Grant Mills in Carbon emissions, Climate change, Energy abundance, Future of Energy, Government support, History-making, LINKS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear-inclusive energy policy, Politicians supporting nuclear, Reduced ecosystem impacts, Regulatory reform, Scientific debate, Solving climate, US technological leadership, Zero emission energy

November 16, 2021

The costs of closing nuclear plants during a climate battle

Following the release on Nov. 8, 2021 by Stanford University and MIT experts of an independently funded assessment of the costs to California of the 2018 decision to prematurely close Diablo Canyon—which was followed only a few months later by the passage of SB 100, "The 100 Percent Clean Energy Act of 2018" obligating the state to use "eligible renewable energy resources and zero-carbon resources" to supply 100% of retail sales of electricity in California by 2045—there has been a renewed effort to get the state to reconsider this ill-conceived, wasteful and expensive plan. The following are a listing of some of the published responses that we've seen emerge from experts weighing in about this matter.

(Click to see the Report.)

NOV. 10

The Economist: Will the climate crisis force America to reconsider nuclear power? Reaching net-zero targets will be much harder without it.

"The Golden State’s only remaining nuclear plant provides nearly 9% of its electricity generation, and accounts for 15% of its clean-electricity production. Yet despite California’s aggressive climate goals and a national push to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, Diablo Canyon is set to close down by 2025. A new report from researchers at Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reveals just how detrimental that would be.

NOV. 11

CalMatters Guest Commentary by Assemblymember Jordan Cunningham (R) and Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg (D): Keep Diablo Canyon open to help meet emissions reduction goals.

"What if everything California and the nation is doing to slow climate change just isn’t enough?

To reach our zero-carbon goals while maintaining system reliability and avoiding debilitating blackouts, we need a mix of clean energy sources – renewables like solar and wind power. We need aggressive investment in energy storage projects. And we need to revisit whether Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant should continue to operate another 10 years past its scheduled 2025 decommissioning."

"There is a serious risk that we will not be able meet our emission reduction targets while maintaining grid reliability without Diablo Canyon. Merely replacing the clean power we lose from the plant will require 90,000 acres of development of renewable resources, even as the siting of new renewable energy plants and associated transmission have proven slow to develop and face substantial opposition. Keeping Diablo Canyon online would guard against these risks, and, if additional renewables are brought online, dramatically accelerate carbon reductions."

NOV. 16

Washington Post Editorial Board Opinion: Closing California's last nuclear power plant would be a mistake.

"If the state is serious about achieving carbon neutrality over the next few decades — and it should be — it cannot start by shutting down a source of emissions-free energy that accounts for nearly 10 percent of its in-state electricity production."

NOV. 16

San Luis Obispo Tribune, by Kaytlyn Leslie: There’s a new push to keep Diablo Canyon open. Here are 5 things you need to know.

"According to the study, the benefits of keeping Diablo Canyon open even just 10 years past its closure date in 2025 include:

- A 10% annual reduction of California’s power sector carbon emission;
- A reduction in the state’s reliance on natural gas;
- The potential for new clean energy sources such as hydrogen fuel production;
- A source of desalinated water in a time of drought, and
- Helping the state avoid more rolling power outages such as the ones that hit in 2020.
- Additionally, the power plant would save ratepayers a total of $2.6 billion if kept open another 10 years, and an estimated $21 billion if kept open 20 additional years, researchers said.

NOV. 18

Engineering News-Record, by Mary B. Powers: Delay Close of Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant, MIT-Stanford Study Says.

"Scientists and engineers from Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology claim in a new report that delaying retirement of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo County, Calif., by a decade until 2035 would reduce carbon emissions from state utilities by more than 10% and save $2.6 billion in power costs.

With accelerating effects of climate change, issues facing California “compel a reassessment” of the closure plan, researchers say. The 2,240-MW two-unit plant, which began operating in the mid 1980s, can remain economic for the foreseeable future, they said.

Using it for desalination also could also increase fresh water in the state for a significantly lower cost than other methods, the academics said. Extending the plant operating license to 2045 would reduce the need for 18 GW of solar power to meet state requirements and spare 90,000 acres of land needed for its production, the researchers said. Approval to build desalination and hydrogen production plants would be needed. "

NOV. 21

Los Angeles Times OpEd by Drs. Steven Chu and Ernest Moniz: California needs to keep the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant open to meet its climate goals.

"Researchers at MIT and Stanford University . . . found that an inclusive strategy that preserves the clean electricity from Diablo Canyon will augment new energy generation from renewables and other sources of clean power. We need to increase renewables at a massive scale, but that will take decades, so any zero-carbon source we retire today will set us back years on the zero-carbon journey.

Carbon-free power is also essential for system reliability and resilience because, beyond the short-term variability, there are weeks and months when wind and solar power are low and storage technologies are of inadequate duration. This is not an either/or situation: California needs both Diablo Canyon and renewables to significantly reduce emissions over the next two decades.

Revisiting the decision to close Diablo Canyon will involve many stakeholders, including federal regulators needed to permit restart of the license extension process. But that dialogue needs to happen because the stakes are so high.

Reimagining Diablo Canyon’s role in California’s energy future is an opportunity we cannot afford to ignore."

DEC. 4

Rally to Save Clean Energy planned by Climate Activists: A coalition of climate and pronuclear groups have organized a rally in San Luis Obispo on Saturday, Dec. 4, 2021. To learn more about the event and to register to attend, go to SaveCleanEnergy.com.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Anti-nuclear campaign, Brilliant thinkers, Carbon emissions, Climate change, Climate policy, Construction costs, LINKS, Macro Energy Systems, Nuclear competitiveness, Politicians supporting nuclear, Pro-nuclear campaign, Solving climate, Zero emission energy

October 8, 2021

Anti-Nuclear Chickens Coming Home to Roost

Ted Nordhaus is a highly respected expert who, as executive director of the Breakthrough Institute, has been on the bleeding edge of those pushing more effective solutions to our energy and environmental woes for decades. His opinion piece, "In Global Energy Crisis, Anti-Nuclear Chickens Come Home to Roost," he provides a bold assessment of how badly the progressive agenda for climate has performed. Wherever "green" policies hold sway and nuclear power plants have been closed, clean electricity has been replaced with dirty power.

Contrary to what many people think, the rapid growth of renewable energy has led largely to increases in emissions, sky-high electricity prices and the loss of some of our most critical clean energy assets, which have caused power shortages and life-threatening energy crises. Germany, which persists in closing its nuclear power plants, has been reduced to decimating ancient forests and villages in its desperate pursuit of new coal resources for the resulting surge in demand for coal power.

California has been forced to build new gas plants and to demand that utilities with backup diesel generators, operate them non-stop when demand is high and renewable generation is down—not the outcome that those who support renewables want to see. In particular, the planned closure of Diablo Canyon, which was approved with the hope that its generation would be replaced by renewables, is nowhere near on track to do so. As a result, the CPUC is both bending and breaking rules to enable coal and gas to replace the clean generation provided by Diablo, while planned geothermal and battery storage are taking longer than had been assumed. Nordhaus calls out the "Pollyannish assumptions" and unrealistic plans that find California in the position of prematurely shuttering its largest single source of clean energy, only to add back more fossil power, to the delight of the fossil fuel industry.

Nordhaus doesn't explicitly ask "How's them chickens?" but you can almost hear him pose that question to those who read this assessment and care to adddress climate change with smart, effective solutions.

Read Foreign Policy's In Global Energy Crisis, Anti-Nuclear Chickens Come Home to Roost, by Ted Nordhaus, published October 8, 2021.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Anti-nuclear campaign, Brilliant thinkers, Carbon emissions, Climate change, Climate mayhem, Climate policy, Future of Energy, LINKS

April 4, 2020

Isabelle Boemeke

Isabelle Boemeke is a social media influencer who has chosen to use her star power as a fashion model to create educational videos and messages for her followers to advocate for nuclear power as a solution to climate change. Tweeting and posting at Twitter, Instagram and TikTok under the name "Isodope," Isabelle speaks knowledgeably about energy and, in particular, about the benefits of nuclear energy, to a social media-savvy community that is not usually engaged in discussion of energy technology, science, industry or even climate change. This has required both great courage, talent and commitment, and has revealed the power of Isabelle's creativity and resourcefulness. Isabelle has been so successful in doing these things, she was invited to present a TED Talk, which was also well received.

Examples of Isodope Social Media Videos (At Twitter: @Isodope, at Instagram (@I_sodope), at TikTok (@Isodope)

https://youtube.com/shorts/jh24kJ96qos?si=yP9zAAz_LT3kT23dhttps://www.tiktok.com/@isodope/video/6902456563613617413
Screenshot 2023-09-30 at 12.39.32 PM

These efforts have had an enormous impact. In 2020, the haute-fashion media outlet, Highsnobiety, ran a cover-story interview with Isabelle which candidly raises the topic of the horrors of the most dangerous energy on earth: fossil fuels.

“Let’s talk about the most dangerous energy source on earth. The World Health Organization blames it for 29 percent of all lung cancers, 24 percent of strokes, a quarter of all heart disease, and 43 percent of chronic lung infections — all of which could be prevented. [It] produces invisible particles that fill up the sky like a bucket, trapping the sun’s heat and choking rivers, plants, and animals like us. The worst of all . . . the companies who burn it are not required to take care of their waste.”

Then, she counters that with a discussion of “what might be the safest power source we have, by many countable metrics,” which, of course, is nuclear energy. Speaking for herself, she claims:

“I think it’s the coolest form of energy. Everything else sucks in comparison. Fossil fuels are obviously bad. It’s just burning stuff like coal, oil, or gas. Solar and wind are fine, but they’re intermittent and very granola. Nuclear is like a technology from the future.”

As impactful as her social media presence has been, Isabelle’s efforts have not been limited to interviews, TikTok videos or even TED Talks. Working with a team under the auspices of the "Save Clean Energy" name, she was the mastermind and powerhouse behind an organized rally that was held in San Luis Obispo in support of saving Diablo Canyon. This rally drew hundreds of people, local politicians and experts, and resulted in a flurry of articles and opinion pieces expressing public support for nuclear energy in California, a place where such views have been in rtreat for decades.

Isabelle Boemeke (holding the sign) is flanked by Save Clean Energy's organizational partners, Heather Hoff and Kristen Zaitz from Mothers for Nuclear (on the left side), and members of other pronuclear groups.

Then, on February 1, 2022, shortly after that public and well-received rally, Isabelle help organize a group of 79 experts to write and send a letter to Governor Newsom urging him to save Diablo Canyon for the sake of not reversing our climate progress. For the many nuclear professionals and energy experts dispairing about the prospects of saving the state's sole remaining nuclear power plant, this was an opportunity to address the Governor as scientific and academic experts in energy and climate action.

What happened next is the stuff of actist legend: Governor Newsom listened! He started to consult his own experts and apparently his own team of energy experts at the CEC, CAISO and elsewhere agreed that shuttering Diablo Canyon would almost certainly cause unnecessarily more severe power outages and likely result in the loss of life. Governor Newsom then began to take the necessary political steps to bring the California legislature around to his point of view.

There were a series of CEC-hosted hearings on Diablo Canyon which invited the public to weigh in. California's pronuclear community attended these sessions in droves. Newsom himself went out publicly to visit Diablo Canyon and explore the truth about the safety of the plant and wrote articles about it, that got published widely in major newspapers. He then sought out support from PG&E executives and the DOE's Civilian Nuclear Credit program for the funding to help the plant restart its licensing work. Fortunately, the DOE had just secured $5 billion in funding for the CNC to help "at risk" nuclear power plants through Biden's Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act. There Newsom found a very receptive response, so he was able to avoid having the bulk of the cost of this reversal imposed on the ratepayers. This helped sway the California Legislature to do the right thing. Combined, these actions resulted in the passage of S.B. 468, that laid the authority to save Diablo Canyon.

It seems very clear that the Diablo Canyon rally and the letter from scientists, both of which were organized by Isabelle, provided positive press coverage for the Governor to make his very public about-face on nuclear power. Of course, the fact that two other Democratic Governors, Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Governor Gretchen Witmer of Michigan, both had previously come out in support of their state's nuclear power and still maintained their political support, gave Newsom the confidence to do the same in California, which probably helped greatly with his political calculus.

Nevetheless, Newsom's ability to listen and decide to support Diablo Canyon and nuclear power in general, was an historic political shift for the most overtly progressive and antinuclear state in the union. In doing so, California took the advice of its scientists, distancing itself from Germany, whose politicians were unable to muster the political backbone required to listen to its experts and overrule the antinuclear ideologues (and so shuttered its last nuclear power and now is now sadly razing villages and forests to dig up and burn lignite coal to keep the power on).

Which shows that a single, motivated and talented woman can make a major difference in the fight against emissions.

Brava, Isabelle!

Sources:

Highsnobiety: Isabelle Boemeke Is the Nuclear Influencer the World Needs, April 2021
The San Luis Obispo Tribune: Diablo Canyon supporters rally in SLO to keep nuclear power plant open, by Kaytlyn Leslie and Laura Dickinson, Dec. 4, 2022
The Atlantic, The West's Nuclear Mistake, by David Frum, Dec. 4, 2022
More about the letter to Governor Newsom at Climate Coalition: Sign the letter to Governor Newsom to Save Diablo Canyon

Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, NEWS, Nuclear R&D, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Pro-nuclear campaign, Solving climate, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID