Built in 1963 on Humboldt Bay, just south of Eureka, this is the oldest commercial nuclear power plant in the state. It was shut down after 13 years of fitful operation after an earthquake fault was discovered beneath it. The spent uranium fuel rods remain on site, but by 2005 PG&E hopes to have moved them to containers designed to withstand earthquakes. You can see this small nuclear plant on the bay side of Highway 101, off King Salmon Drive. PG&E dismantled its stack last year. (Unlike later nuclear plants, it had no containment chamber, but vented directly from the reactor room.) The stacks you see are of a small fossil-fuel unit, which is still operating.

PG&E quietly chose Bodega Head as the site for a new nuclear power plant, acquired easements for power lines as far as Napa County and, in 1963, dug a huge hole here—right on an earthquake fault—to hold the containment vault of the reactor core. When some citizens got wind of what was coming they went to court and the news media. PG&E dropped the project and sold the site to the state for $1. The historic hole, known ever since as the “Hole in the Head,” is now part of Sonoma Coast State Beaches. It filled with water and became a freshwater pond, much appreciated by birds and birders.From Highway 101 north of Bodega, take West Side Drive to Campbell Cove and park. For a wide-angle view, continue to the uphill parking lot, walk to the bluff.

The utilities also planned nuclear power plants at five other coastal sites: Point Arena, Davenport, Nipomo Dunes, Point Conception (Little Cojo Cove), and Malibu (Deer Creek Canyon). All were rejected because of citizen protest or proximity to earthquake faults. Southern California Edison sold the Point Conception site to the Southern California Gas Company, which proposed a liquified natural gas (LNG) terminal—sparking another great battle in the late 1970s. LNG tankers were to bring gas, frozen in huge tanks, from Indonesia. In the 1980s, when natural gas prices were deregulated and more of this clean-burning fuel became available, this proposal was also abandoned. The Gas Company’s successor, Sempra Energy, recently sold the 975-acre site to a private buyer.

The two 500-foot-high exhaust stacks of this power plant dominate the view of the Monterey Bay shoreline. The new owner, Duke Energy Power Services of North Carolina, plans to remove eight older, smaller stacks and 19 oil tanks. Duke has proposed to erect a smaller plant, with four shorter stacks and a more energy-efficient unit, which will recycle waste heat now emitted into the air. The two giant stacks are to remain.

With its high stacks looming on the Morro Bay waterfront, this power plant rivals Morro Rock as a monumental landscape structure. Like the first units of the Moss Landing plant, it was built in the 1950s, and at first burned cheap heavy oil brought in by tanker. Since the 1970s, it has been fueled by natural gas, which became cheaper than oil after federal price controls were lifted. Duke Energy Power Services, which bought the plant from PG&E in July 1999, plans to remove some of the old equipment, and build new, more efficient units, which will use heat generated by turbines—heat that is now largely wasted—to produce steam that will drive another electric generator.

You cannot see this nuclear power plant from the highway, nor from a trail. PG&E owns 12,000 acres around it, including 14 miles of coastal terrace, extending up to two miles inland. Docent-led hikes, with magnificent coastal views, are offered on the seven-mile-loop Pecho Coast Trail. Otherwise there is no public access. The site PG&E first chose for this plant was in the Nipomo Dunes, but the Sierra Club and others objected. In a move that agonized and split the membership, the Sierra Club suggested the Diablo Canyon site as preferable.
The two units that PG&E planned to open in 1972 and 1974 actually began to operate in 1985 and 1986. The estimated construction cost of $320 million grew to an actual cost of $5.8 billion—over 17 times as much. When at the CPUC, I negotiated the agreement under which ratepayers pay PG&E a price for each kilowatt produced at Diablo Canyon, according to a system called performance-based pricing. Otherwise the CPUC would have had a many-year-long fight over how much of the plant’s $5.8 billion cost was “reasonable” for ratepayers to pay for, and how much was “unreasonable,” that stockholders would pay. PG&E has operated the plant well above the national average of efficiency and so has come out financially whole under the performance-based pricing formula.

These plants in Oxnard are surrounded by dunes, wetlands, and former wetlands. The Coastal Conservancy has negotiated to buy these lands for conservation. SCE will remove the visually intrusive tank farms.

SCE has sold both the Mandalay plant (above) and the Ormond Beach plant to Reliant Energy.

The El Segundo plant (top), next to Dockweiler State Beach, is part of an industrial complex that includes Chevron’s oil refinery, the Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant, and the Scattergood power plant owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, at Playa del Rey. Dockweiler Beach has many barbecue pits and is popular with families, despite the airplanes that roar overhead from Los Angeles International Airport. These plants burn natural gas, but can also use oil piped in from oil refineries, especially the adjacent Chevron refinery. The marine oil terminal offshore serves the refinery. SCE built the plant, and continues to operate it, but it is now owned by NRG/DESTEC Energy Co. of Houston.

This massive 52-acre complex in Redondo Beach—a huge eight-unit power plant and large tank farm—was recently sold to the AES Corporation of Arlington, Virginia. The new owner will redevelop part of the site in ways that may make the city’s waterfront east of Harbor Drive more people-friendly. The tanks will be removed, making room for housing, office space, related uses, and plant modernization. Power Plant 1, decommissioned some years ago, may be preserved as a “landmark,” converted to live-work and commercial uses. Kathrin Moore, an urban designer working with SOM Architects, says “the building is architecturally interesting, vintage 1940s, almost an Art Deco–type building.” In collaboration with the City, the design team has prepared a site design which will be considered in the near future. AES will continue to generate electricity at other units of this power plant, which has been designated a “must run” plant (see p. 13).

This oil and gas-fired plant at the Los Cerritos wetlands in Long Beach was sold by SCE to the AES Corporation. The Conservancy has an option to buy part of the land. The Haynes plant, owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, is behind Alamitos Bay.

Across the Pacific Coast Highway from Huntington State Beach, this plant was also recently sold to AES. The Conservancy has negotiated to purchase about 20 acres of degraded wetlands as part of a package with wetlands at Ormond Beach and Mandalay Dunes.