Abalone Alliance

Abalone Alliance
Formation1977
TypeNonviolent civil disobedience group
PurposeOpposition to nuclear power
HeadquartersSan Luis Obispo & San Francisco
Location
  • California

The Abalone Alliance (1977–1985) was a nonviolent civil disobedience group formed to shut down the Pacific Gas and Electric Company's Diablo Canyon Power Plant near San Luis Obispo on the central California coast in the United States. They modeled their affinity group-based organizational structure after the Clamshell Alliance which was then protesting the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in coastal New Hampshire. The group of activists took the name "Abalone Alliance" referring to the tens of thousands of wild California Red Abalone that were killed in 1974 in Diablo Cove when the unit's plumbing had its first hot flush.

The Abalone Alliance staged blockades and occupations at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant site between 1977 and 1984.[1] Nearly two thousand people were arrested during a two-week blockade in 1981, exceeding Seabrook as the largest number arrested at an anti-nuclear protest in the United States.[2]

  1. ^ Diablo Canyon Timeline Part II
  2. ^ Daniel Pope. Conservation Fallout (book review), H-Net Reviews, August 2007.