California lawmakers reject latest bid to lift nuclear moratorium — a law that has now stood for 50 years
Committee to Bridge the Gap today welcomed the failure of AB2647, the latest in a series of annual attempts to overturn California’s moratorium on new nuclear power plant construction.
The bill was amended, removing the moratorium provisions and adding language for a state study, just days before its hearing in the Assembly Committee on Natural Resources.
“California’s nuclear moratorium has always carried a clear condition: it may be lifted when there exists a way to dispose of the long-lived radioactive waste,” said Haakon Williams, executive director of Committee to Bridge the Gap. “It has now been 50 years since the state put that condition in place, and those decades have revealed it to be a wise policy. We are hardly any closer today than we were in 1976 to figuring out how to responsibly dispose of spent nuclear fuel, which remains dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.”
CBG was joined in opposition by Sierra Club California, Union of Concerned Scientists, and other environmental and public interest groups. This year marks the 50th anniversary of California’s Nuclear Safeguards Act, which prohibits new nuclear fission reactors from being constructed in the state until the United States government successfully develops a means to dispose of the high-level nuclear waste produced by nuclear power plants. California achieved a significant legal victory when the moratorium was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1983.
The defeat of AB 2647 is the latest in a series of recent attempts to get the California legislature to overturn the state’s moratorium, despite the waste condition remaining unmet. Communities near the state’s former and operating nuclear power plants – including San Onofre in southern California and Humboldt Bay in the north – are still grappling today with the tons of high-level radioactive waste stored on-site, with no path to permanent disposal in sight.
At the federal level, the Trump administration has launched a systematic dismantling of nuclear safety oversight. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been directed to conduct a “wholesale revision” of its regulations. A top DOGE official was quoted telling NRC it would be expected to “rubber stamp” approvals. Hundreds of NRC staff have left the agency. California Attorney General Rob Bonta has joined a multi-state coalition of Attorneys General challenging a proposed rule that would exempt nuclear reactors from environmental review.
“It’s hard to imagine a worse time to open California to new nuclear reactors,” said Williams. “We’re living through the most severe rollback of critical nuclear safety regulations this country has ever seen, and now is the moment that nuclear boosters want to end our state’s moratorium? That disregard for nuclear safety speaks volumes.”
Security concerns from heightened global conflict further underscore the vulnerabilities presented by nuclear power plants. As the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran have both demonstrated, operating reactors (like the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine and the Bushehr plant in Iran) and nuclear waste storage sites represent high-value military targets. Reports earlier this year of a possible Iranian drone strike on the U.S. West Coast raised concerns about California’s own nuclear infrastructure as military targets.
If the goal is affordable electricity, nuclear power is close to the worst investment a state can make. Georgia’s Vogtle plant — America’s most recent nuclear construction project — ended up costing $32 billion and handed ratepayers a 25 percent bill increase. Small modular reactors, often promoted as a cheaper alternative, have proven even more costly: every one built so far has run 300 to 700 percent over budget. Meanwhile, extending Diablo Canyon’s license to 2030 is on track to exceed half a billion dollars in costs to California taxpayers.
“Renewables are the real clean energy success story,” said Williams. “They are cheaper, faster to deploy and do not produce waste that will outlast civilization. The legislature made the right call.”
About Committee to Bridge the Gap
Committee to Bridge the Gap is a non-profit nuclear policy organization focusing on issues of nuclear safety, waste disposal, proliferation, and disarmament. Founded in 1970, our work is aimed at revealing and correcting government misconduct in the control of nuclear and related hazardous materials that pose significant threats to public health and security if not carefully regulated.
