Diablo Canyon, California’s sole remaining nuclear energy plant, has been left for useless on various events during the last decade or so, and is at present slated to start a prolonged decommissioning course of in 2029. Despite its tenuous existence, the San Luis Obispo energy plant acquired some critical computing {hardware} on the finish of final yr: eight NVIDIA H100s, that are among the many world’s mightiest graphical processors. Their function is to energy a brand-new synthetic intelligence software designed for the nuclear power trade.
Pacific Gas and Electric, which runs Diablo Canyon, introduced a cope with synthetic intelligence startup Atomic Canyon—an organization additionally primarily based in San Luis Obispo—across the similar time, heralding it in a press launch as “the primary on-site generative AI deployment at a U.S. nuclear energy plant.”
For now, the bogus intelligence software named Neutron Enterprise is simply meant to assist employees on the plant navigate intensive technical experiences and rules — tens of millions of pages of intricate paperwork from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that return a long time — whereas they function and preserve the ability. But Neutron Enterprise’s very existence opens the door to additional use of AI at Diablo Canyon or different services — a risk that has some lawmakers and AI specialists calling for extra guardrails.
PG&E is deploying the doc retrieval service in phases. The set up of the NVIDIA chips was one of many first phases of the partnership between PG&E and Atomic Canyon; PG&E is forecasting a “full deployment” at Diablo Canyon by the third quarter of this yr, mentioned Maureen Zawalick, the corporate’s vice chairman of enterprise and technical companies. At that time, Neutron Enterprise—which Zawalick likens to a data-mining “copilot,” although explicitly not a “decision-maker”—shall be expanded to seek for and summarize Diablo Canyon-specific directions and experiences too.
“We most likely spend about 15,000 hours a yr looking out via our a number of databases and data and procedures,” Zawalick mentioned. “And that’s going to shrink that point method down.”
Trey Lauderdale, the chief government and co-founder of Atomic Canyon, informed CalMatters his goal for Neutron Enterprise is straightforward and low-stakes: he desires Diablo Canyon staff to have the ability to lookup pertinent info extra effectively. “You can put this on the file: the AI man in nuclear says there is no such thing as a method in hell I need AI operating my nuclear energy plant proper now,” Lauderdale mentioned.
That “proper now” qualifier is essential, although. PG&E and Atomic Canyon are on the identical web page about sticking to restricted AI makes use of for the foreseeable future, however they aren’t foreclosing the potential of finally rising AI’s presence on the plant in yet-to-be-determined methods. According to Lauderdale, his firm can be in talks with different nuclear services, in addition to teams who’re curious about constructing out small modular reactor services, about find out how to combine his startup’s know-how. And he’s not the one entrepreneur eyeing methods to introduce synthetic intelligence into the nuclear power discipline.
In the meantime, questions stay about whether or not ample safeguards exist to manage the mix of two applied sciences that every have potential for hurt. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was exploring the difficulty of AI in nuclear vegetation for a couple of years, however it’s unclear if that may stay a precedence underneath the Trump administration. Days into his present time period, Trump revoked a Biden administration government order that set out AI regulatory targets, writing that they acted “as limitations to American AI innovation.” For now, Atomic Canyon is voluntarily maintaining the Nuclear Regulatory Commission abreast of its plans.
Tamara Kneese, the director of tech coverage nonprofit Data & Society’s Climate, Technology, and Justice program, conceded that for a narrowly designed doc retrieval service, “AI might be useful when it comes to effectivity.” But she cautioned, “The concept that you could possibly simply use generative AI for one particular form of process on the nuclear energy plant after which name it a day, I don’t actually belief that it will cease there. And trusting PG&E to soundly use generative AI in a nuclear setting is one thing that’s deserving of extra scrutiny.”
For these causes, Democratic Assemblymember Dawn Addis—who represents San Luis Obispo—isn’t enthused concerning the newest developments at Diablo Canyon. “I’ve many unanswered questions of the security, oversight, and job implications for utilizing AI at Diablo,” Addis mentioned. “Previously, I’ve supported measures to manage AI and forestall the substitute and automation of jobs. We want these guardrails in place, particularly if we’re to make use of them at extremely delicate websites like Diablo Canyon.”
How AI Came to SLO
Before Lauderdale moved into synthetic intelligence and nuclear power, he based a well being care software program firm known as Voalte, which was designed to assist hospital employees talk over iPhones, lowering their reliance on loudspeaker paging and desktop pc methods. At the time, circa 2008, Lauderdale mentioned his pitch was met with worries and resistance from hospital employees. He likes to attract parallels between that have, which culminated in 2019 when he offered his firm to a hospital mattress producer for $180 million, and the pushback he’s heard about Atomic Canyon.
In 2021, Lauderdale moved to San Luis Obispo so he, his spouse, and youngsters might be nearer to his spouse’s household in Northern California. Lauderdale informed CalMatters he didn’t understand how shut Diablo Canyon was to his new residence till after he relocated. It was via assembly Diablo Canyon employees out locally, he says, that he discovered extra about nuclear power and landed on his subsequent startup concept.
Atomic Canyon launched in 2023 with a process of downloading roughly 53 million pages of publicly out there Nuclear Regulatory Commission paperwork, which encapsulate all of America’s nuclear power fleet and can be found on a database known as ADAMS. That course of began round January 2024, after Lauderdale gave the Nuclear Regulatory Commission a heads-up about what Atomic Canyon was planning on doing: “I reached out to [the commission] simply to say, hey, I’m Trey Lauderdale, American citizen, entrepreneur. We’re going to start out constructing AI within the nuclear house, and we simply needed to verify the NRC was conscious that after they see all these downloads, it’s not a overseas actor or somebody attempting to do something dangerous to their system.”
Lauderdale mentioned the fee supported Atomic Canyon’s efforts. After downloading the info, Atomic Canyon partnered with the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to kick off analysis and improvement. The lab homes the Frontier supercomputer, which was the world’s quickest when it debuted two years in the past. Atomic Canyon used Frontier to construct a type of AI that may carry out “sentence-embedding fashions,” which Lauderdale says are able to processing nuclear jargon and are much less more likely to “hallucinate,”or reply a query utilizing fabrications.
“You principally educate the bogus intelligence find out how to perceive nuclear phrases, their context, what totally different acronyms imply,” he mentioned.
In the spring of 2024, Lauderdale and PG&E representatives kicked off formal discussions about how Atomic Canyon might be of use at Diablo Canyon. PG&E quickly invited Atomic Canyon employees to go to the nuclear facility, the place they shadowed staff for a couple of weeks, “observing the place there have been operational inefficiencies that we may attempt to goal with AI,” Lauderdale mentioned.
Then, in September 2024, Atomic Canyon introduced the completion of testing on its AI, known as “FERMI”; these fashions, that are open-source, are what collectively make up the Neutron Enterprise software program. A couple of months later, in November, got here the first-of-its-kind announcement with PG&E.
How Neutron Enterprise Works
PG&E introduced in NVIDIA {hardware} to Diablo Canyon to run FERMI. Zawalick and Lauderdale each informed CalMatters that the Neutron Enterprise software program is being put in with out cloud entry in order that delicate, inside, paperwork don’t go away the location. Zawalick mentioned their information storage insurance policies meet all Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Department of Energy nuclear info necessities, and shall be repeatedly examined and inspected.
Initial Neutron Enterprise customers are at present solely utilizing the software program to look via publicly out there regulatory information. PG&E and Atomic Canyon hope to provoke the following part of Neutron Enterprise’s rollout within the third quarter of 2025, when extra on-site staff will be capable to use the service, and it is going to be in a position to seek for and summarize inside paperwork by using optical character recognition (which permits extra paperwork to be listed), and retrieval-augmented era (which permits extra versatile querying).
According to Lauderdale, using synthetic intelligence to hurry up doc searches isn’t dangerous. If AI fails to seek out the data sought by a employee, the individual can “simply fall again to the earlier method they might search,” he mentioned, referring to sifting via a number of on-site databases and typically manually pulling paper recordsdata.
Neutron Enterprise additionally generates quick summarizations of paperwork whereas customers are looking out databases, and it’s attainable these summarizations may produce incorrect info, too — however they might not alter the precise contents/directions contained throughout the paperwork which are learn over by employees.
CalMatters requested a lot of state lawmakers — particularly these close to Diablo Canyon — what they consider Atomic Canyon’s first-of-its-kind partnership with PG&E. The consensus response was optimistic, although tailor-made to Neutron Enterprise’s at present restricted performance.
Malibu Democratic Sen. Henry Stern, a member of the Senate Energy Committee, informed CalMatters he’s “reticent to rain on AI instruments that may do higher grid administration,” as long as correct security protocols are adopted. Democratic Sen. John Laird, who represents San Luis Obispo, took an even-keel stance: “As AI integration expands, so does its power demand… Balancing technological development with public security, environmental stewardship, and regulatory oversight shall be vital in shaping AI’s position in our state’s power future,” he mentioned. San Francisco Sen. Scott Wiener, whose bold AI security laws was vetoed by the governor final yr, agrees along with his Democratic colleagues: “If AI will help enhance the day-to-day efficiencies of Diablo Canyon, that’s nice.”
Out of 5 San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors, three responded to requests for remark. Supervisor Bruce Gibson mentioned that “utilizing AI to entry and set up required info on this scenario is sensible,” however he pressured the necessity for transparency and public updates from PG&E. Supervisor Heather Moreno mentioned that it’s an excellent factor PG&E shall be taking “benefit of a ‘supercharged’ search engine… As it is not going to be used for operations, this seems to be an excellent first step in utilizing AI at Diablo Canyon.” And Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg, a former PG&E worker, mentioned she was “inspired” that Diablo Canyon was working with Atomic Canyon “to navigate the large quantities of knowledge collected from hundreds of pages of audits and experiences.”
Varying Rules and Regulations
However innocuous using AI at Diablo Canyon at this time, there are big-picture considerations about how the know-how may later be used there and at different services. “I believe now we have to be actually cautious after we speak about broader AI decision-making,” Wiener mentioned. “That’s why it’s actually, actually necessary to beef up authorities capability to set requirements round use of AI in delicate contexts comparable to a nuclear energy plant.”
In November 2024, Nuclear Regulatory Commission Inspector General Robert J. Feitel got here to the identical conclusion. He recognized “planning for and assessing the impression of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning on nuclear security and safety” as one of many 9 main challenges the company confronted. The month prior, a commission-sponsored report by the Southwest Research Institute seemed into synthetic intelligence-related “regulatory gaps” within the nuclear power trade. It discovered fewer than 100 gaps, but additionally famous that “no sensible AI requirements had been recognized” from exterior sources that might assist tackle these gaps. The report really useful growing a lot of AI-specific guides.
Atomic Canyon and PG&E seem like maintaining the Nuclear Regulatory Commission within the loop on their very own accord. “I wouldn’t declare now we have an official relationship with the NRC, however we make sure that to transient them on what we’re doing, as a result of, being newer within the nuclear trade, surprises are dangerous,” Lauderdale mentioned. He believes that the nuclear power trade’s cautious strategy will, in itself, act as a “pure buffer” in opposition to overly invasive or harmful AI integrations, although he conceded that “as we begin to traverse into purposes that do introduce threat, we completely will need guardrails and regulation to guarantee that AI is correctly deployed.”
When CalMatters first spoke with PG&E’s Zawalick in December, she talked about she’d only in the near past met with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s AI working group, an advisory committee of kinds. Since then, she hasn’t had additional discussions with the fee about AI rules, she just lately informed CalMatters.
And the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee, a state-appointed security group that inspects the nuclear facility and supplies suggestions about its operations, first discovered about PG&E’s cope with Atomic Canyon via media experiences, the committee’s authorized counsel Bob Rathie informed CalMatters. In December 2024 and January 2025, a committee consultant participated in two fact-finding visits about Neutron Enterprise, assembly with PG&E employees to study extra concerning the software program. The committee concluded from these visits that Diablo Canyon’s use of synthetic intelligence is “optimistic,” they usually haven’t any security considerations right now.
What Happens Next?
Lauderdale spoke to CalMatters whereas touring to a different nuclear facility, although he couldn’t reveal which one. He mentioned that Atomic Canyon is “in discussions” with “many different nuclear organizations,” and that some “actually thrilling bulletins” will come later this yr. Through Atomic Canyon’s partnership with Diablo Canyon, he desires to display a proof of idea for current nuclear services, in addition to firms curious about constructing or re-commissioning nuclear services. He hopes Diablo Canyon’s lifecycle is expanded past the present decommissioning timeline, but when it’s not, his software program can be utilized for the ability’s decommissioning course of, he mentioned.
“As we achieve extra belief within the product and construct out extra capabilities, we’ll decide different non-risky actions that may take off one-by-one, and we’ll maintain creating extra worth with this new know-how,” he mentioned.
Responding to questions on whether or not the rollout of AI at Diablo Canyon has had ample oversight, Lauderdale reiterated that his startup product doesn’t have a major operational position.
“I contemplate our firm the chief in deploying AI and nuclear,” he mentioned, earlier than giving a future-facing evaluation that left the door simply barely ajar: “and I believe we is not going to have AI operating nuclear energy vegetation for a really very long time.”
This article was initially revealed on The Markup and was republished underneath the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
