Diablo Canyon Decommissioning Engagement Panel

Public Comments

DateSeptember 21, 2021
Decommissioning TopicRepurposing of Facilities
Comment / Suggestion:

Public comment presented during August 25, 2021 Engagement Panel Meeting:

MR. SHOULDERS: I have several comments. I'll be curt.

On the windmill issue, the 1920 Marina Act or the Jones Act requires the ships that would install these installations to be made in the U.S. and carried by U.S.-owned and crude vessels and there's no such huge ship that can install these devices in the United States at all and for the very small number of East Coast installations, they had to have a Dutch ship -- I think it was Dutch -- come to Canada to take all of the equipment and install it because there's no such ship in the United States. So I think when we talk about the feasibility of installing a few of these on the West Coast, we need to be aware of the fact there's no way to install it as I stated.

Secondly, on the desal issue, 18 months ago or two years ago, this panel had a long presentation by the engineer at Diablo Canyon that's in charge of the water and a representative of the south county organization that's responsible for water and that south county person said he had no interest whatsoever in taking Diablo desal water because of the cost issue and I'm surprised no one seems to be aware of that.

Thirdly, when we talk about the massive amount of renewable energy we need in this state to meet this goal that the state has put forth, and I listen to the galatial pace of accomplishing getting windmills approved, it doesn't support the kind of goal that the state has. You know, this is an existential climate change and we need to do a World War II kind of thing. So we need to cut through the bureaucracy. And, finally, the access road, I'm particularly familiar with the -- if you look at coming up the slope from the entrance, there's lots of slippage that's occurred over time and there's a massive threat there and an expense to keep that road open and that needs to be considered when we talk about using any installations further up north from the entrance point. I'm done.

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