Media Advisory
California Assembly to vote for MORE nuclear power plants, today, Monday, April 21, 2:30 PM
Today, April 21, 2025, the California Assembly is slated to vote on AB 305, a “stealth exemption” that will enable the nuclear industry to begin building build small nuclear power plants in California by exempting “Small Modular Reactors” or “SMRs” from existing law.
The vote on Assembly Bill 305 will occur at the Committee on Natural Resources Hearing at 2:30pm on Monday, April 21st. AB 305 is the very first item on the Agenda.
AB 305 grants an “exemption” to an existing legal ban on new nuclear reactors in California by allowing “Small Modular Reactors” or “SMRs” to be constructed in California.
WHO: Chair of the Natural Resources Committee, Arambula, and Assembly members Dixon and Hoover as co-authors (click here to find your representative)
WHAT: This new exemption will allow “small modular” nuclear reactors to cover the State of California
WHEN: 2:30 PM, Monday, April 21
WHERE: Attend virtually at this hyperlink.
State Capitol Building, Room #437
According to Charles Langley, the executive director of the San Diego-based consumer advocacy group Public Watchdogs, “AB 305 subverts and perverts California’s 49-year old legal ban on building nuclear power plants that generate deadly radioactive nuclear waste.”
“Under current law, no nuclear power plants can be built until there is a solution to the problem of where to bury deadly nuclear waste,” says Langley, who adds that “The waste issue is important because small modular nuclear reactors actually produce more waste per kilowatt of electricity than power plants like Diablo Canyon and the failed San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.”
“It is a sneak attack,” says Nina Babiarz, Public Watchdog’s Director of Development, “AB 305 is the product of the nuclear industry’s highly paid lobbyists and political hacks.”
According to Babiarz, “Nuclear waste is deadly to all human life for hundreds of thousands of years. Nobody has come up with a safe solution for storing that waste since 1976, when California lawmakers decided to ban all new nuclear power plants until a safe plan for storing the radioactive waste is in place.”
“There have been no public hearings. Zero” says Babiarz. “AB 305 makes a mockery of our trust in elected officials to uphold the law. This is about new nuclear. This exemption was snuck through the Assembly under the auspices of a land use focus and everybody knows that this is about new nuclear. The public has a right to know that this exemption circumvents the law.”
According to Public Watchdogs, the exemptions should be vetted by the Assembly Committee on Utilities and Energy, which is the correct committee in the California Assembly with legislative jurisdiction over nuclear power.
Public Watchdogs has produced a one-page Fact Sheet on its Web site at www.publicwatchdogs.org
Contact: For background or to arrange an interview contact Charles Langley at (858) 752-4600
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