Solar sounds just as capable and is cleaner and cheaper in the long run.
I think the punchline was Diablo Canyon is getting more dangerous the longer it operates and California can’t shut it down till solar plants are ready and they aren’t there yet.

But I know nothing.

Just build them away from fault lines.

Another item I've read/heard is that we're basing safety assumptions for all plants on engineering and operations that's decades old. Tech is a lot better now.

I'm not a proponent of nuclear power, but I'm a realist. Less is better. And not on earthquake faults.

Never destroy a non fossil plant that's already running, it's irreplaceable.

Yes, deploy small modular reactors but couple them with storage, just as Diablo uses the Helms Pumped Hydro plant for storage.

Ask me anything, I've toured Diablo many times and may be out there again in October.

Diablo is older and even more earthquake prone than San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, or so I've read.

Is it really safe to run after all these years? What about cracks? What about the impending Big One? Can you recommend reading (for old non-scientist) so I have answers when friends call me foolish for supporting nuclear energy? I don't support building more large-scale plants, especially in California, and small reactors are safer and faster to build, but I don't have knowledge to refute naysayers.

Thank you.

Those are the two commissioning dates, construction of Diable began the same year that SONGS went online.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's estimate of the risk each year of an earthquake intense enough to cause core damage to the reactor at Diablo Canyon was 1 in 23,810, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant

I'd like to see it stay open until an equivalent generation capacity SMR fleet is dispatched.

I've visited a number of NGas plant, they use the same tubines and generators (basically) and are never in the pristine condition that Diablo presents. The place looks like it was built last week.

...because it supports our solar and wind fantasies?

If we shut down Diablo Canyon now it would be replaced with natural gas power plants that would still be dumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere forty years from now.

People keep claiming that solar and wind power "still costs less than nuclear" but that's a fucking lie. Creative accounting.

Wind and solar power are not economically viable without fossil fuels.

As it is, the actual cost of new hybrid solar / wind / natural gas power systems are comparable to expensive new nuclear construction such as the Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia.

Some of these solar and wind projects, covertly and overtly promoted by fossil fuel interests, are MORE expensive than nuclear power and will do nothing, absolutely nothing, to reduce the total amount of greenhouse gasses we humans eventually dump into the atmosphere.

The most dangerous energy resource isn't nuclear power. It's natural gas.