New A-Plants Not Needed--Deukmejian : Longtime Nuclear Defender Says California Has Enough Capacity

California has enough electrical generating capacity to meet its needs in the foreseeable future without the development of new nuclear power facilities, Gov. George Deukmejian said in San Diego Thursday as he completed a two-day tour of state power plants.

The governor’s assessment came after a tour of the computerized control center used by San Diego Gas & Electric Co. to purchase and sell power. It was the last leg of a tour in which he visited geothermal, solar and coal gasification facilities in Northern and Southern California.

Deukmejian, a longtime defender of nuclear power development, supported San Diego Gas & Electric Co.’s Sundesert project near Blythe. Plans for the proposed nuclear power project were scrapped in 1979, in large part because of the opposition of then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., a Democrat.

The Republican chief executive, outside the company’s electronic nerve center, said he still supports nuclear power development, but he doesn’t anticipate any facilities being proposed in California in the near future.

“I don’t expect that the industry itself is going to initiate further nuclear power plants, at least for the immediate, foreseeable future,” he said.

The governor noted that utilities have had problems getting regulators to process their applications, but he also said there may “not even be a need.”

One reason he cited was the development of renewable and alternative sources of energy in California.

Deukmejian was told Wednesday at Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s geothermal project in The Geysers area north of San Francisco that steam generated by intense heat at the Earth’s core is providing more electricity than the firm’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant near San Luis Obispo.

He said geothermal, solar and other alternative energy sources will provide “about 25% of all energy produced in California” within 10 years.

The governor and Administration officials have been stressing that such energy alternatives are environmentally clean and will reduce the state’s dependence on foreign oil and gas producers. Frequent references were made over the two days to the Mideast oil crisis in the 1970s and the resulting energy crisis here.

The governor was accompanied on the tour by state Energy Commission Chairman Charles R. Imbrecht, who said that nearly all of the new power plant projects approved by the Energy Commission since Deukmejian took office in 1983 involve mostly alternative and renewable energy sources.

The Administration has been criticized for taking credit for projects that really got their start under Brown, but Imbrecht said: “We have already approved projects that will generate more megawatts than all of the projects approved during the eight years of Brown.”

Purchasing Ceremony

Deukmejian’s San Diego visit highlighted that there is such an abundant supply of electricity that the city’s utility can buy it for less from out of state than it would cost to produce it locally.

The governor participated in a public relations-type ceremony in which he purchased 100 megawatts of electricity from an Arizona power supplier. Deukmejian purchased the electricity for 2.8 cents a kilowatt hour, which company executives said would cost 3.5 cents if they produced it themselves.

The trip, in addition to briefings Deukmejian received from top company executives, served a political purpose as the governor prepares to run for reelection next year.

Each location Deukmejian stopped at presented opportunities for the governor to be photographed or be seen on TV against the background of dramatic energy development, from the tall flumes of steam spewing from the earth in The Geysers to the hundreds of solar reflectors at Southern California Edison Co.’s Solar One project in the Mojave Desert to the high-technology grid at the San Diego facility.