The California nuclear moratorium should become a thing of the past

California's longstanding nuclear moratorium, enacted 50 years ago as an amendment to the Warren-Alquist Act, is critically impeding the state's energy reliability and contributing to its high electricity prices. The Orange County Register published an opinion piece advocating for the immediate removal of this ban, citing a policy report by Paige Lambermont, a Research Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Policy Fellow at the Independent Institute. Lambermont argues that nuclear power is uniquely suited to California's needs, offering high reliability, safety, and carbon-free generation essential for maintaining a stable grid and achieving Net Zero goals by 2045. She highlights that despite Silicon Valley-based tech companies pursuing nuclear deals in other states to power data centers for artificial intelligence, California itself cannot leverage this technology due to the moratorium. The state's heavy reliance on electricity imports, second only to Virginia, makes it vulnerable to supply disruptions and exacerbates its already high energy costs, which are 87 percent above the national average. The article points out that other states like Kentucky, Montana, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Illinois have already lifted their nuclear power bans in recent years. It concludes that in an era of escalating power demand, particularly from data centers, California's self-imposed restriction on nuclear energy is an unsustainable policy error that must be rectified to ensure economic growth and reliable energy supply.