[h335ian]

This was originally planned in conjunction with the San Onofre nuclear power plant, which gave all of SoCal amazing power and offered the infrastructure for performing desalination in conjunction with ocean water used for cooling parts of the reactor. Sadly, some hippie in Sacramento decided to kill our power plant so now energy prices have soared and we’ve lost the potential for desalinated water in San Diego, Orange and LA counties. My buddy has been working the decommission for a decade now. Given a few beers, the rants are quite illuminating and disappointing

[mdorazio]

FYI, San Diego has a desalination plant that cost about a billion dollars to build and provides water equivalent to that used by 400,000 homes [1]. The lack of the San Onofre plant doesn't seem to be a limiting factor.

[1] https://www.sdcwa.org/your-water/local-water-supplies/seawat...

[h335ian]

Yup! If memory serves, some of the design was borrowed from the San Onofre plans. Certainly only limiting in terms of volume of desalinated water for Orange County. I believe that was the original intent as San Onofre is nicely situated to serve both counties

[leereeves]

Do these water restrictions apply to desalination? If not, perhaps they'll encourage more desalination.

[chrisweekly]

"some hippie in Sacramento"

surely it's more complicated than that?!

[AnimalMuppet]

I suspect the "hippie" was the governor (Sacramento is the state capital).

[chrisweekly]

yes, I took that for granted -- but my point stands. it takes more than one intransigent politician.

[h335ian]

;P

[bilbo0s]

Taking a decision to build a nuclear power plant on a fault line always is.

Better plan would probably be to build a nuclear plant in Arizona and export the power to California. Use some of it for desalination. Then export water to Arizona.

But nowadays calling people hippies or conservitards is what passes for analysis, civic discourse, and problem solving.

[h335ian]

When hyperbolic reactions rule the day, particularly when they are contradictory to one’s stated goals (provide clean, low prices energy and potable water) - dismissive labels are readily handed out. Both sides of the aisle are guilty so these labels go along with the hand waving dismissal of basic common sense & standing local rulings. The analysis, civic discourse and problem solving was performed, but disregarded for performative ideals - that continue to be a direct contradiction to the research & solutions presented. It just sucks. Especially when the state can leverage authority from Sacramento, overruling local resolutions and ordinances that were based on the research, analysis and civic discourse.

[ExoticPearTree]

Well, Japan has a lot of them that don't have issues. And since California doesn't get tsunamis, it is perfectly fine to build a nuclear power plant on a fault line. Less riskier than Japan.

[h335ian]

Turns out it’s actually harder to decommission… :shrug: