The Devil and the details

On the nearby Pecho Coast, American nuclear energy effectively died but if the neo-cons eye a renaissance, it must begin at Diablo Canyon

Twelve years before the accident at Three Mile Island, world-renowned nature photographer Ansel Adams penned a chilling statement.

“Diablo Canyon was prophetically named,” Adams wrote in the Feb. 1967 edition of the Sierra Club Bulletin. “It grew as a contentious issue … to sow doubt and dissension.”

The immortality of his words belied the simple context of their use at the time Adams was referring to a disagreement within the Sierra Club of whether to endorse the plant’s current location and save the Nipomo Dunes from utility development.

Even among environmentalists of the era, atomic energy hardly proved a robust bone of contention. Stacked up next to smoke-bellowing antiquities like Morro Bay or dystopian installations like Moss Landing, a well-placed nuclear plant symbolized progressive energy policy. By the time the first Diablo Canyon reactor became operational in 1984, that perspective had completely eroded.

New Times SLO