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

April 12, 2022

Berkeley Students Energy Conference looks to a nuclear future

Berkeley students have been organizing an annual Energy Summit, through the student group, Berkeley Energy & Resources Collaborative (BERC) which "connects, educates and motivates students, alumni, faculty and industry professionals to address the world's energy and resource challenges." Under the inspiration of co-president Dinara Ermakova, a UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate, this year's summit included a session on the future of nuclear.

The panel, held on April 11, 2022 was moderated by Lou Martinez Sancho, VP of Strategy and Innovation at Kairos power and covered a broad set of questions, reflecting the starting point widely acknowledged and understood by Berkeley's graduate-level students, namely that nuclear energy is clean, safe and reliable and that, as the grid becomes more decentralized, nuclear power will play a critical role in balancing the grid while complementing renewables and energy storage technologies to create a truly clean energy system.

Valerie Gardner, managing partner of Nucleation Capital, was on the panel put together by the student team, which included Wendy Simon-Pearson, an attorney at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, Canon Bryan, CFO at advanced nuclear venture, Terrestrial Energy, and Leslie Dewan, co-founder and CEO at RadiantNano. Together this panel tackled the complex and thoughtful questions posed by the organizers. Under discussion during the session were the following:

1. Given that large conventional Gen III nuclear power has seen rising costs and a certain amount of PR damage for delays in construction, how are Gen IV ventures addressing these issues and continued public concern with cost, safety, and waste management?

2. How does the geopolitical conflict in Ukraine and Europe provide a potential opportunity for renewed interest in and receptiveness towards nuclear energy and will Gen IV be able to reassert itself and help countries that wish to ween themselves of Russian oil and gas achieve energy self-sufficiency?

3. What does the future of nuclear technology look like and what are the most significant barriers to deployment at scale?

4. In light of the growing consensus that, even if we maximize wind and solar development, renewables alone will not deliver the level of decarbonization needed to meet climate goals on time, how does nuclear overcome barriers to obtain entry into conversations about "sustainable" strategies?

5. Longer term, what are the optimistic prospects for nuclear energy and what changes and initiatives are needed to promote the innovations necessary to keep a seat at the table?

Needless to say, these are the right questions but an hour-long panel does not nearly provide sufficient time to fully cover all of these questions. Nucleation Capital will be publishing a white paper on the answers. If you are interested in receiving a copy, please contact us.

Learn more about The Berkeley Energy Summit 2022 here and see the Agenda for their panels on April 11, 2022 here.

Published by Valerie Gardner in Advanced Nuclear, Climate change, Climate policy, Energy abundance, EVENTS, Future of Energy, NEWS, US technological leadership, Zero emission energy

March 22, 2022

Tech Billionaires Rally around Nuclear

Billionaires are rallying around nuclear, according to a recent report from Pitchbook on venture investments in 2021. Notably, some of these billionaires, Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen, have spoken out about the need to both preserve existing nuclear and to "build 1,000 new state-of-the-art nuclear power plants in the U.S. and Europe right now."

This isn't exactly new, since billionaires like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel have been both investing and advocating for nuclear for years but, nevertheless, 2021 was a banner year for nuclear venture fundraising. Not just are billionaires excited about the prospects for nuclear energy to solve climate, a lot of non-billionaire investors are as well.

According to Pitchbooks, which tries to track all venture investment deals, a record $3.4 billion was plowed by investors into nuclear ventures, which was more than the amount invested in the prior decade combined. Fusion ventures were a major beneficiary of this growing investor interest, despite yet having progressed past the "science project stage" with Commonwealth Fusion raking in $1.8 billion by itself and Helion Energy raising $500 million, but the majority of the 28 deals that were closed were likely in fission.

There is clearly a trend around an increased level of investor interest in next generation nuclear and a willingness by investors to jump in to the sector. Nucleation Capital was also launched and made its first investments in 2021—which were reported to and presumably included in the analysis by Pitchbook. Our ability to do so a function of the same factors that have stimulated the rise in venture activity, which include:

1. Widespread recognition that nuclear energy deserves inclusion in green taxonomies and is a critical rare source of firm, clean power that competes against fossil fuels, not renewables.

2. 60+ years of commercial operating experience provide ample evidence that the risks of a nuclear accident are grossly overplayed by the press and nuclear's opponents.

3. Overly hyped radiation fears have been muted by a broader understanding of the beneficial effects of background levels of radiation that occur naturally in our environment.

4. Mastery of next-gen nuclear technology is vital to both national and international security so that Russian and Chinese providers do not succeed in supplying the world's future energy needs and thus being in a position to apply geopolitical pressures on developing nations.

5. Grassroots climate and clean energy advocacy has made its mark on the world stage at COP 26 and demanded not just to protect existing nuclear power plants but also to deploy next-generation designs.

6. Fast-growing wind and solar development have not proven an ability to deliver the level of decarbonization needed to meet climate goals, due to their intermittency and dependence on natural gas.

7. Longer term decarbonization goals will require energy abundance that is not feasible with current dilute sources of energy but require nuclear's ability to repower coal plants with clean energy.

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the geo-political issues have risen to the top and have increased interest among many countries in eliminating dependence on natural gas even faster than previously planned. If there is a silver lining to the war being fought in Ukraine, it may be the added impetus that it has given to the global urgency to reduce gas dependence and build (or restart) nuclear energy. This reverses the prior trend, where gas (with externalized emissions) replaced nuclear energy, since the only fuel that really competes with nuclear is natural gas (so long as emissions can be externalized).

Learn more at Bloomberg, Tech Billionaires Rally Around Nuclear as Energy Crisis Looms, by Lizette Chapman, March 22, 2022. [PDF]

Published by Nucleation Capital in Advanced Nuclear, Brilliant thinkers, Carbon emissions, Climate change, Climate innovation fund, Energy abundance, Future of Energy, Investor activity, LINKS, Nuclear financing, Nuclear innovation, US technological leadership, Venture capital support for nuclear, Zero emission energy