Biden grants PG&E $1 billion to keep Diablo Canyon nuclear plant open
Aerial view of the Diablo Canyon, the only operational nuclear plant left in California, due to be shutdown in 2024 despite safely producing nearly 15% of the state’s green electrical energy power, is viewed in these aerial photos taken on December 1, 2021, near Avila Beach, California.
George Rose | Getty Images
The Biden administration on Monday said it’s providing Pacific Gas & Electric Co. with a $1.1 billion grant to help the company prevent the closure of Diablo Canyon, California’s last nuclear power plant.
Diablo Canyon was originally scheduled to be decommissioned in two phases in 2024 and 2025, but state lawmakers in September voted to keep it open for five more years. PG&E applied for funding in the Department of Energy’s initial phase of the $6 billion Civil Nuclear Credit program aimed to keep U.S. nuclear power reactors open.
The conditional funding, which comes from the bipartisan infrastructure law passed by Congress last year, creates a path forward for Diablo Canyon to remain open and could allow PG&E to pay back some of the $1.4 billion loan for the plant that lawmakers approved.
Diablo Canyon is California’s single largest source of power, providing 8.6% of the state’s total electricity and 17% of its zero-carbon electricity. It has helped the state grapple with power shortages as temperatures in California continue to rise and heat waves grow more intense with climate change.
“This is a critical step toward ensuring that our domestic nuclear fleet will continue providing reliable and affordable power to Americans as the nation’s largest source of clean electricity,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.
However, critics of Diablo Canyon have pointed out that the plant, which is located next to the Pacific Ocean in San Luis Obispo County, is vulnerable to earthquakes and that there is no permanent waste disposal solution.
Final terms of the grant are subject to negotiation and finalization, the Energy Department said, but the funding is designed to cover PG&E’s anticipated losses from keeping Diablo Canyon open. Not every plant that applied to the Energy Department’s program is receiving funding in this initial phase.
The Biden administration has argued that nuclear power is vital to fighting climate change and to helping it achieve its commitment of 100% clean electricity by 2035 and a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.
“Nuclear energy will help us meet President Biden’s climate goals, and with these historic investments in clean energy, we can protect these facilities and the communities they serve,” Granholm said.
Nuclear power provides 50% of the country’s carbon-free electricity, but shifting energy markets and other economic factors have resulted in the early closures of 13 commercial reactors since 2013, the Energy Department said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in a statement that keeping the Diablo Canyon plant open is necessary for the state to meet its clean energy goals while continuing to supply reliable power. Feinstein said she would monitor the funding process to ensure strict safety and environmental reviews are undertaken at the federal and state levels.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement that the grant will provide a limited-term extension of the plant and “support reliability statewide and provide an onramp for more clean energy projects to come online.”
Elon wants the US military to start buying Tesla Cybertrucks – and now they are! The Air Force has ordered two Cybertruck testers for target practice to determine how easy they are to blow up, while Jo makes up a whole new conspiracy theory on today’s explosive episode of Quick Charge!
Today’s episode is brought to you by retrospec—makers of sleek, powerful e-bikes and outdoor gear built for everyday adventure. Electrek listeners can get 10% off their next ride until August 14 with the exclusive code ELECTREK10 only at retrospec.com.
An it doesn’t stop there. We’ve also got exciting new home battery backup and V2X options for Tesla owners, and one Texas EV driver that decided to conquer the Texas floodwaters by harnessing the awesome combined powers of electrons and stupidity (it’s pretty awesome).
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Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer project is reportedly over. Bloomberg reports that CEO Elon Musk is killing the project after a mass exodus of talent from the Dojo team to a competing startup.
Dojo was the name of Tesla’s in-house AI chip development to create supercomputers to train its AI models for self-driving.
Tesla hired a bunch of top chip architects and tried to develop better AI accelerator chips to rely less on companies like NVIDIA, AMD, and others.
It has been running into delays for years.
We previously reported on significant setbacks. In 2018, Jim Keller, the famed chip architect who was first hired to lead Tesla’s chip-making effort, left the company.
Ganesh Venkataramanan succeeded him, but he left Tesla in 2023.
For the last few years, Peter Bannon, who worked with Keller for years, has been leading Tesla’s chip-making programs, but he is now reportedly also leaving the automaker.
Bloomberg reports that Musk has “ordered the effort to be shut down.”:
Peter Bannon, who was heading up Dojo, is leaving and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has ordered the effort to be shut down, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. The team has lost about 20 workers recently to newly formed DensityAI, and remaining Dojo workers are being reassigned to other data center and compute projects within Tesla, the people said.
DensityAI is a new startup currently in stealth mode, founded by several former Tesla employees, including Venkataramanan.
It reportedly plans to build chips for AI data centers and robots, much like the Dojo program.
The company recently hired 20 former Tesla employees who worked on Dojo.
While the program appeared to be lagging behind for years as Tesla increasingly bought more compute power from NVIDIA, Musk has been claiming progress.
The CEO said in June:
Tesla Dojo AI training computer making progress. We start bringing Dojo 2 online later this year. It takes three major iterations for a new technology to be great. Dojo 2 is good, but Dojo 3 will be great.
During Tesla’s quarterly conference call in late July, the CEO claimed that Dojo 2 will be “operating at scale sometime next year.”
Electrek’s Take
It’s unclear whether the report is accurate or if it’s an extrapolation from the talent exodus to Elon killing Dojo, or if Elon was lying just a few weeks ago.
Alternatively, this development may be so recent that Elon went from being confident in Dojo a few weeks ago to disbanding the team working on it now.
Either way, I think it’s clear that the project has been lagging, and Tesla has been extremely dependent on chip suppliers rather than making its own.
I think Dojo being likely dead is not a big loss for Tesla.
When it comes to chip making, developing its own inference compute for onboard “AI computers” was always the more important project.
TSMC is set to produce Tesla’s new AI5 chip, which is coming soon, and we have recently learned that Samsung will be manufacturing its AI6 chip.
I think the bigger concern from this report is that it’s the latest example of an ongoing exodus of talent at Tesla.
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Jack Dorsey, co-founder and chief executive officer of Twitter Inc. and Square Inc., listens during the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Florida, on Friday, June 4, 2021.
Eva Marie Uzcategui | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Block shares jumped in extended trading on Thursday after the fintech company increased its forecast for the year.
Here is how the company did, compared to analysts’ consensus estimates from LSEG.
- Earnings per share: 62 cents adjusted vs. 69 cents expected
Block doesn’t report a revenue figure, but said gross profit rose 14% from a year earlier to $2.54 billion, beating analysts’ estimates of $2.46 billion for the quarter. Gross payment volume increased 10% to $64.25 billion.
Block raised its guidance for full-year gross profit to $10.17 billion, representing 14% growth from a year earlier. In its prior earnings report, Block said gross profit for the year would come in at $9.96 billion.
The company expects full-year adjusted operating income of $2.03 billion, or a 20% margin. For the third quarter, the company expects gross profit to grow 16% from a year ago to $2.6 billion, with an operating margin of 18%.
Square payment volume in the quarter grew 10% from a year earlier.
Block faces growing competition from rivals such as Toast and Fiserv‘s Clover, though its Square business still gained share during the quarter in areas such as retail and food and beverage.
Block shares were down 10% this year as of Thursday’s close, while the Nasdaq is up 10%. Last month, Block was added to the S&P 500.
— CNBC’s Robert Hum contributed to this report.
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