Earthquake risks and rising costs: The price of operating California’s last nuclear plant (Los Angeles Times)
“Under two gargantuan domes of thick concrete and steel that rise along California’s rugged Central Coast, subatomic particles slam into uranium, triggering one of the most energetic reactions on Earth.
Amid coastal bluffs speckled with brush and buckwheat, Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant uses this energy to spin two massive copper coils at a blistering 30 revolutions per second. In 2022, these generators — about the size of school buses — produced 6% of Californians’ power and 11% of their non-fossil energy.
Yet it comes at almost double the cost of other low-carbon energy sources and, according to the federal agency that oversees the plant, carries a roughly 1 in 25,000 chance of suffering a Chernobyl-style nuclear meltdown before its scheduled decommissioning in just five years — due primarily to nearby fault lines.”
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