Diablo Canyon—the nuclear power plant that provides California with 7 percent of its electricity—will soon close.  In 2024 and 2025, the plant will shut down its two reactors to implement “lower-cost zero-carbon energy sources.”  This decision was the result of extensive negotiations conducted by the owner of the plant, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), unions, and environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth and the Natural Resources Defence Council.^[1]  

The power plant’s desalination facility, which can produce 5,678 cubic metres of water a day, will no longer proceed with a $22 million to $36 million plan to supply water to 4,000 homes in south San Luis Obispo County.  PG&E spokesmen Blair Jones confirmed the nullification of this plan.^[2] 

As reported by the Editorial Board of the New York Times, the closure of Diablo Canyon is “an event of potentially great significance for the future of energy generation in this country and for the health of the earth itself – and not just because a bunch of sometimes quarrelsome forces (unions, environmental groups, the power company) came together to make it happen.”

Firstly, plant’s owner, PG&E, acknowledges that “it can provide the same amount of energy at lower costs by investing in wind and solar power and in energy efficiency improvements throughout the system, including its customers.”

^{Credit: Lisk Feng/ New York Times}

Secondly, the plant supports California’s ground-breaking legislation, which requires state-led utilities to get half their electricity from renewable sources by 2030.  This agreement, as explained in the Times, “could serve as a positive example for other states and nations that may in time need to replace aging nuclear plants without increasing carbon emissions.”  The United States’ 99 nuclear reactors—“which produce approximately a fifth of the nation’s power”—may in certain cases upgrade to zero-carbon sources of energy.

Meanwhile, researchers at Babol University of Technology in Iran have “synthesized a nanostructured membrane” that reportedly “led to an increase in the efficiency of seawater desalination and a decline in costs.”^[3]  Zahid Dabbaghian, the project manager, reported to the Mehr News Agency that the project utilized nanostructured membranes (comprising cellulose and functionalized carbon nanofibers)—which purportedly increased “the membrane’s hydrophilic property” and boosted the “osmosis process.”^[4]  This result suggested “that membranes modified by amine carbon nanofibers show a better performance compared to membranes modified by carboxyl carbon nanofibers during the direct osmosis process.”^[5]