Early retirement of the nation’s nuclear power plants may mean higher energy prices and greater greenhouse gas emissions, which is not good for the economy or the President’s Climate Change goals. One of the obvious examples is the early retirement of the San Onofre reactors in California. Despite California’s professed goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions, if San Onofre’s electricity is replaced by natural gas, it would increase the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by 6 million tons per year and require an annual consumption of about 135 billion cubic feet of natural gas.
