The inside story of how nuclear energy—long considered scary, controversial, and even apocalyptic—has become the hot topic of the climate debate, and perhaps a vital power source of the future.
On June 21, 2016, Pacific Gas & Electric Company announced a plan to shutter California’s last nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon, in 2025. The plan was hailed by environmental groups and politicians around the country. Then, suddenly, the state’s Democratic establishment reversed the decision, and in 2024 the Biden-Harris administration awarded the plant $1.1 billion in credits to extend its life. What happened in between?
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow is a journalist based in Southern California. Her writing has appeared in print or online in the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, The Nation, the Washington Post, the Times Literary Supplement, and The Guardian, among other publications. She is the author of Personal Stereo, which was named one of Pitchfork’s favorite music books of 2017, and The G Ring, a Kindle single. Rebecca was previously a contributing writer for the Boston Globe’s Ideas section and a contributing editor at Dissent. Her work has received support from the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, and UC Irvine’s Newkirk Center for Science and Society.