Power to the People

[David C Kifer]

To understand better how California’s environmental policies have played
out, however, consider what two of them—opposition to nuclear energy and
promotion of solar power—have done to Clay Station, California, 25 miles
outside Sacramento, where two gigantic cooling towers rise up over
rolling fields and farmland. This facility was once the Rancho Seco
Nuclear Generating Station, capable of generating over 900 megawatts
(MW) of electricity, enough to power upward of 900,000 homes. Rancho
Seco opened in 1975, when antinuclear fervor in California was just
beginning to gain momentum, and at one point, it generated more
electricity than any other nuclear plant in the world.
[...]
In a 1989 referendum on whether to decommission Rancho Seco, 53 percent
of Sacramento voters agreed. Just 14 years after powering up, and nearly
two decades before its operating license was to expire, the nuclear
reactor shut down.
The facility didn’t entirely close, though. In 1984, trying to position
itself as a national leader in solar power, the Sacramento Municipal
Utility District (SMUD) began building photovoltaic solar panels on the
site, taking advantage of the already constructed infrastructure to
transmit power. At the same time, in a bid to position itself as a
national leader in solar power, SMUD instituted programs subsidizing the
construction of photovoltaic panels for Sacramento homes and businesses.
The utility halted the installation of new panels in 2002, after it
became clear that the program would cost perhaps three times more than
projected and had lost millions of dollars, falling well short of its
modest goal to install 2 MW of solar energy that year.
Today, Rancho Seco possesses one of the largest photovoltaic arrays in
the world. Yet it provides less than 4 MW of electricity, or less than
half of 1 percent of what the closed nuclear plant optimally offered.
Total solar capacity for the Sacramento region is less than 50 MW, or
about 6 percent of the nuclear plant’s output. In fact, after millions
of dollars in subsidies and other support for solar power, the entire
state of California has less than 250 MW of solar capacity.
--Max Schulz, "California’s Potemkin Environmentalism", _City Journal_,
Spring 2008
http://city-journal.org/2008/18_2_californias_environmentalism.html

--
Dave
"Tam multi libri, tam breve tempus!"
(Et brevis pecunia.) [Et breve spatium.]