Diablo Canyon Power Plant

California's last operating nuclear plant sits on a bluff above the Pacific near Avila Beach — the only one left standing after San Onofre shut down in 2013. Unit One went online in May 1985. Together its two reactors supply electricity to more than three million people. In 1981, over a two-week period, nearly two thousand activists were arrested protesting its construction. That tension has never fully resolved: the plant was slated for closure, then California extended its life through 2030.