{"id":13141,"date":"2011-05-31T17:51:46","date_gmt":"2011-06-01T00:51:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/?p=13141"},"modified":"2018-02-02T00:34:19","modified_gmt":"2018-02-02T00:34:19","slug":"planting-seeds-for-a-new-ca-nuclear-plant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2011\/05\/31\/planting-seeds-for-a-new-ca-nuclear-plant\/","title":{"rendered":"Planting Seeds for a New CA Nuclear Plant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Could California’s next nuke be on the horizon?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Backers of a new Fresno “clean energy park<\/a>” aim to use nuclear power to clean up salty irrigation water in California\u2019s\u00a0Central Valley.<\/p>\n

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The twin cooling towers of the decommissioned Rancho Seco nuclear power plant. Could the Central Valley see another nuke constructed near Fresno? (Photo: Craig Miller)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They see the state\u2019s 35-year-old moratorium on expansion of nuclear power as a mere speed bump in the road. They wouldn’t be the first. There have been several attempts to challenge<\/a> the ban over the years \u2013 in the courts, in the legislature, and\u00a0even a couple false starts\u00a0through the initiative process.<\/p>\n

But the idea of simply drawing up plans for a plant and gearing up to build it \u2013 without getting permission from the state \u2013 that\u2019s a new approach, which I explain in my Wednesday radio feature for The California Report<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fresno Nuclear CEO John Hutson told me he thinks it would be much more profitable to sell precious clean water to\u00a0farmers than to generate electricity for the grid.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy should we sell electricity when we could clean enough water to irrigate 40 thousand acres of Thompson seedless grapes?\u201d, Hutson asked. He also plans to make water bottles out of the captured salts and fill them with fresh, desalinated water. I wonder how many of those he’d have to sell to finance two 1600-megawatt reactors?<\/p>\n

KQED\u2019s Quest first talked to Hutson<\/a> several years ago about his plan to build a nuclear plant next to a Fresno wastewater treatment plant. At that point, he was talking about\u00a0selling electricity and possibly introducing a ballot initiative to overturn the moratorium, enacted in 1976.<\/p>\n

But now he\u2019s simply plowing forward, teaming up with French energy giant Areva<\/a> to draw up plans for a clean energy park that would include solar, desalinization, and nuclear. They’ve even produced an animated tour<\/a> of the proposed park:<\/p>\n