Experts worried that the intense heat, pressure and radiation inside the reactor core had changed the chemical composition of key metal components, making them so brittle that if hit with the cold water needed to stop a runaway meltdown, they would shatter. At thirty years of age, Rowe was then among the oldest nuclear plants running in the US. In 1991, lighting struck the Yankee Rowe atomic reactor on Massachusetts’ Deerfield River. Its focus on embrittlement dates back thirty years. The reversal has infuriated California’s renewable energy community-and will now face the nation’s most critical federal court challenge in decades. Their power would be replaced by renewables, primarily wind and solar.īut last year Newsom-now Governor-strong-armed the legislature and the CPUC into a deal meant to keep both reactors running for at least five more years, probably longer. The unprecedented agreement said the reactors would shut in 20, when their 40-year Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses would expire. In a high-profile blue ribbon ceremony, PG&E signed an extensive contract with then-Governor Jerry Brown, then Lieutenant-Governor Gavin Newsom, the state legislature, the California Public Utilities Commission, local town governments, major labor unions, local, state and national environmental groups and others. The company agreed to phase out the two Diablo reactors a year prior. It later admitted to more than 80 federal charges of involuntary manslaughter. In 2017 the company’s badly maintained power lines ignited fires throughout northern California that incinerated the town of Paradise and killed more than 80 people. It later admitted to 8 federal charges of involuntary manslaughter. In 2010 the company’s badly maintained gas lines in San Bruno exploded, incinerating 19 homes and 8 humans. Already hugely unpopular, PG&E ignored the uproar, flipped the machinery, and forced the plant online anyway. In 1984, as the protests were winding down, Pacific Gas & Electric had to admit it had installed a major multi-ton component backward. Over the decades, fierce public opposition has made them the site of more civil disobedience arrests (around 10,000) than any other US reactors. To support forcing full scrutiny of all of Diablo’s critical safety issues, go to The twin Diablo atomic cores, burning about nine miles west of San Luis Obispo on the central California coast, were designed and largely built in the 1960s and ‘70s. But it’s at the center of whether a melting atomic reactor will calmly cool down or explode in a violent planetary apocalypse. The key issue-embrittlement-may seem obscure. Their epic case could decide the economic and ecological fate of the nation. The infamous atomic reactors at Diablo Canyon are headed to federal court. Diablo Canyon Power Plant, on the coast of California.
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