Dear State Assemblymember Tasha Boerner & State Senator Catherine S. Blakespear,
The undersigned are asking you to vote against any additional funds or extensions for the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant (DCNPP), and to ensure that any decisions regarding extensions or funding are fully transparent and subject to scrutiny by legislators and citizens.
In 2016, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and all concerned parties agreed to permanently shutter DCNPP in 2024 and 2025.
Thus, DCNPP should be closed already, but after some backroom wheeling and dealing, in 2022 closure was delayed for five additional years.
Plans are now afoot — again coming out of backroom deals — to extend DCNPP's life for an additional 15 years, and give PG&E even more taxpayer and ratepayer money to continue operating these dangerous reactors.
The 2016 decision to close DCNPP was based on all available data at the time, including significant earthquake risks, the rising cost of continued maintenance, the relative cost of alternative (and much cleaner) energy systems, and the continued unavailability of ANY used nuclear fuel repository or even a federal temporary consolidated interim storage location anywhere.
Since that time, the costs of truly clean alternative energy systems (systems that don't risk meltdowns or create unmanageable toxic waste) has dropped dramatically while their availability has gone way up.
Since the decision to keep DCNPP open an additional five years was made, nuclear reactors in several countries have become targets of war, a situation predicted decades ago by researcher Dr. Bennett Ramberg and many others. Nuclear waste, sitting out in the open like it does, is just as much a target for terrorism, sabotage, airplane strikes (despite any no-fly zone, which is a good idea, but hardly guaranteed protection) as the reactors themselves.
The nuclear waste will just sit there, doing nothing, except keep growing at the rate of about 500 pounds per day until the two reactors are finally shut down. And the freshest spent fuel (the most recently removed from the reactor) will always be the most dangerous, the most risky, the most vulnerable to disaster. But even the oldest fuel at the site is lethal and risky and shouldn't exist (but it does).
The continued operation of DCNPP threatens the health and safety of all Californians, as well as people, animals, and plants worldwide.
Money that continues to pour into the aging reactors should be devoted instead to wind and solar power and other renewable sources, with a wide variety of temporary energy storage systems — none of which risk meltdowns or create unmanageable toxic waste storage problems that will outlast all known societies.
For DCNPP to operate for 15 more years, it will require billions of dollars in maintenance and repair (and even that might not work). That's throwing good money after bad. Proponents claim nuclear power is clean and green, but nuclear energy is neither because of the nuclear fuel cycle, the risks of accidents, and the enormous environmental cost for the concrete, steel, construction work, expensive and extensive use of exotic metals and alloys, regular maintenance and operation and additional expenses not found in other energy systems (nuclear waste transport and storage, for example). Furthermore, much of the enormous outlay in steel and other materials cannot be recycled precisely because they become radioactive during use in a nuclear reactor.
Building new nuclear reactors to combat climate change makes no economic sense, as nuclear physicist Dr. M.V. Ramana explains in his excellent book, Nuclear is Not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change. Nuclear plants are too expensive and take too long before generating any electricity (and any profit). Utility scale wind and solar take only months to a few years to construct and can begin generating electricity (and profit) almost immediately. Home rooftop solar is even faster, and far cheaper than nuclear power, as well as cleaner, safer, doesn't need security, and isn't a target of war or terrorism. We all understand the need for a resilient grid and reliable power sources. Distributed energy sources are by for the most reliable — the opposite of nuclear power.
"Too Cheap To Meter" was a blatant lie that started the nuclear era (and error) in the 1950s, but wind power actually does become "too cheap to meter" sometimes in Texas already! As prices for everything else go through the roof, with the proper legislation, citizens can even make a PROFIT by using household-based renewable energy! Why won't California encourage that? Do the big utilities have too much of a hold on our legislature? We hope not! It's hurting our wallets and risking catastrophe!
Perhaps DNCPP proponents hope that by retaining an NRC license at DNCPP, they might be able to power data centers using the site for Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMNRs). But SMNRs are just another false hope of nuclear proponents.
Plans to revive nuclear power to support AI data centers are financially ridiculous for many reasons: First of all, the cost of AI-generated data is highly dependent on its energy cost per bit of information produced. Using the most expensive energy available therefore makes little sense and successful AI data centers will not do that. Second, there are plans for far more data centers than will ever be needed. Third, as computer chips continue to double in power every few years ("Moore's Law" hasn't hit a hard limit yet), most data centers are unlikely to be useful for more than a few years before faster newer data centers make the old ones obsolete. What happens to their nuclear reactors if that's how they are powered? What happens to their nuclear waste? Fourth, combining data centers and nuclear reactors make the possibility of attacks even greater, as seen in the attacks (all since the DCNPP extension was granted) on data centers and nuclear reactors by Iran, Russia, Israel and the United States. Fifth, many contracts for combined nuclear energy/AI data centers require the local utility to agree to purchase the nuclear power and spread the cost out among ALL their customers as if it's just one more source of energy. In reality, it's one VERY expensive energy source that's not useful or appropriate.
Companies planning to build data centers make minimal (to them) investments, expecting huge government/military grants and low-interest loans, and are encouraged to plan for SMNRs to power their data centers. SMNRs are neither small (averaging about 300 MW) nor modular (at least not until dozens have been built, and we're at zero now), and are based on unproven experimental designs or on already-explored and unworkable designs, such as molten salt and/or plutonium-based reactors. All SMNRs will produce nuclear waste that has nowhere to go, and that waste will be even more toxic per pound than DCNPP's, and there will be more toxic waste per kilowatt of electricity produced by the SMNRs (larger reactors are more efficient, which is how we ended up with large reactors to begin with).
Utility companies all over the United States are getting government money and environmental waivers to build SMNRs and to reopen shuttered reactors such as Palisades in Michigan, Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, Duane Arnold in Ohio, and Indian Point in New York, just a few dozen miles from New York City.
California never needed nuclear power (nobody did except people developing nuclear weapons, which nobody should have). As the United States continues to violate global agreements protecting civilian infrastructure such as power plants, water sources, and hospitals, American infrastructure becomes even more vulnerable to attack by terrorists, saboteurs, or all-out war.
DCNPP should not get any more money from California's ratepayers or taxpayers. Shut it down today.
Ace and Sharon Hoffman, Carlsbad California USA
Note #1: The two authors have, combined, over 90 years in the computer industry and even longer (combined) independently studying nuclear energy, nuclear weapons and nuclear waste.
Note #2: DCNPP was officially renamed DCPP recently. The real name should be Diablo Canyon Nuclear Waste Generating Station (DCNWGS).
Note #3: For more information about the financial implications of extending DCNPP's operating license, see links below to documents from San Luis Obispo Mothers For Peace.
https://mothersforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Diablo-Canyon-Letter-to-Legislature-4.16.26.pdf
https://mothersforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/2026.04.12-DCPP-cost-fact-sheet.pdf
https://mothersforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/2026.03.25-Konidena-White-Paper-No-Need-for-DCPP.pdf
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Contact information for the author of this newsletter:
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download:
acehoffman.org
Blog:
acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube:
youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Email: ace [at]
acehoffman.org
Founder & Owner,
The Animated Software Company
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