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Tag: Jennifer Granholm

  • The $1.7 Billion Bet on American-Made EVs, Explained by the Secretary of Energy

    The $1.7 Billion Bet on American-Made EVs, Explained by the Secretary of Energy

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    This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.

    Along with apple pie, baseball, and tipping, the automobile is classically American. But when it comes to the 21st century passenger car, automakers in the United States — save for Tesla — have been playing catchup, scrambling to counter the rise of China’s electric vehicle boom. Sure, both EVs and internal combustion cars have seats and four wheels, but it’s not so simple as American automakers swapping in a few parts and calling it a day.

    So on Thursday, the Department of Energy announced $1.7 billion to fund the conversion of 11 auto manufacturing facilities, which had either been shut down or were at risk of shutting down, to make EVs and supplies for the burgeoning industry. Those facilities will be spread across eight states — Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia — which the DOE says will create 2,900 new jobs and ensure that more than 15,000 union workers keep theirs. General Motors will get $500 million for one of its plants in Lansing, Michigan, and Fiat Chrysler nearly $600 million total for two of its facilities.

    Soon after the announcement, Grist sat down with Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm to talk about why domestic EV manufacturing is so important, how those EVs could actually help the grid instead of destroying it, and why even children will benefit from the $1.7 billion even though they can’t drive.

    The conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

    Q. Why is the Biden administration providing this funding? Why is it important to the DOE that electric vehicles are made domestically?

    A. The funding comes through the Inflation Reduction Act, but the intent behind that, of course, is to make sure that America is reshoring manufacturing, particularly in the clean energy space, and here in the electric vehicle space. We’re competing globally, obviously with China. And we want to make these products here. We want to make them with union workers, and we want to make them in places that have been bruised by globalization. That’s where this particular round of funding really centers — communities that have built automobiles for the past 100 years, and that should be building them for the next 100 years.

    Q. Some of this money is going toward electric buses. Why is it critical to get more of those on the road?

    A. Diesel particulates are not healthy for kids — increased asthma, other very serious health impacts. So having an electric bus, which is quiet and clean and healthy, is wonderful for kids. It’s wonderful for fighting climate change. It’s wonderful for communities, and now it is also wonderful for job creation.

    Q. How is the Biden administration trying to boost the demand for EVs? 

    A. We’re seeing an increase in demand. On top of that, the administration is working on making sure that that demand continues. So how do you do that? By reducing the price. That means those tax credits at the dealership, that are now being used everywhere, brings down the price of an electric vehicle to either be on par and, in many cases, cheaper than an internal combustion engine.

    We want to make sure that there’s the infrastructure so that people don’t have range anxiety, and that’s what the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s charging funding for states is doing, to fill in the gap where the private sector hasn’t been installing chargers. So on transportation corridors every 50 miles, we want to see a high-speed charger, and we want it to be not more than a mile off the transportation corridor and [be] app-enabled. Since the president has taken office, the number of publicly available chargers has doubled. The goal is to get to 500,000 of them by 2030. We’re well on track to do that.

    Q. People have also been worrying that if we are deploying more EVs, the grid simply won’t be able to handle that additional load. Do you have a response to that?

    A. The president has a goal of getting to 100 percent clean electricity by 2035, so we’ve got to continue to deploy, deploy, deploy all these clean energy assets — solar utility-scale, wind, distributed solar, other types of clean energy, like hydroelectric power or geothermal power, or small modular [nuclear] reactors. We will have enough generation capacity for the electrification of transportation.

    Q. And with the development of vehicle-to-grid technology, grid operators would actually be able to tap into EVs as a vast network of batteries. In that case, EVs can actually be an asset on the grid, not a liability.

    A. One hundred percent. The virtual power plants that are created — by making sure the distributed energy resources like electric vehicle batteries are part of the mix — means that we can add between 20 and 100 gigawatts just from virtual power plants like electric vehicles, or a bunch of electric vehicles connected together. So yes, that is absolutely part of the plan, and part of the funding that DOE does is to encourage those types of pilot projects, to ensure that they can be worked out and then taken to scale.

    Q. A few of these facilities that would receive funding are in swing states, and we’ve got an election coming up. I was curious how they were chosen and why now, just before the election? Or is this a matter of: You’re looking more at the facilities that could be converted and less so the state itself.

    A. This does not involve the election. It involves a merit process that is selected by professionals and career staff within the Department of Energy who evaluate all these objective factors about where we could make sure that we repurpose these internal combustion engine plants that were closing in this particular case. A lot of these went to historical automaking communities, because that’s what this was geared toward. This was all part of the Inflation Reduction Act, and so that law compels us to continue to award grants, whether we’re in an election year or out of an election year.

    Q. Republicans have been making an effort to slow EV adoption. Could they target this sort of funding? And if there’s another Trump administration, would they also be able to reverse any of this?

    A. Bottom line is, once these announcements are made and steel is in the ground and people start being hired, which is what’s happening now, it would be political malpractice for any leader of that state or that political party to go in the opposite direction of where their constituents would like to see them go. I mean, people are being hired. It’s a really good thing across the country. So I’m hopeful that any future administration would see the value and the importance of keeping this industrial strategy in place.

    This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/1-7-billion-american-made-evs-explained-secretary-energy/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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    Matt Simon, Grist

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  • Nevada battery recycler wins $2B loan from Energy Department

    Nevada battery recycler wins $2B loan from Energy Department

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    MCCARRAN, Nev. (AP) — A Nevada company that recycles batteries for electric vehicles has won a $2 billion green energy loan from the Biden administration.

    Redwood Materials, a recycling venture founded by the former chief technology officer at Tesla Inc., secured the conditional loan from the Energy Department’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, which helped Tesla more than a decade ago.

    Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced the grant Thursday at Redwood’s facility in Nevada with Gov. Joe Lombardo, where they spoke from a stage to dozens of employees.

    “This region is leading the way to a broader story of what is happening in the country,” Granholm said, pointing to a map of 80 battery manufacturing or supply chain companies that are expanding or opening in the U.S. Most have been announced in response to the infrastructure law President Joe Biden signed in 2021 and the climate law he signed last year, she said.

    Battery recycling will help the U.S. establish its own electric-vehicle supply chain, a major goal of the Biden administration as it seeks to move away from gas-powered cars in the larger fight against climate change. Biden also has promoted domestic production of critical minerals used in EVs and other electronics, as part of the climate fight and to counter China’s longtime dominance in the supply chain.

    With Redwood and other projects underway, “China might be starting to worry,″ Granholm boasted. “And to that I say we’re just getting started.″

    The Energy Department said its conditional commitment demonstrates its intent to finance the Nevada project, but several steps remain before officials approve a final loan.

    Redwood Materials was founded in 2017 by Jeffrey “JB” Straubel, Tesla’s former chief technology officer. It now has more than 300 employees who recycle used batteries and has supply contracts with Ford and with Panasonic, which makes batteries for Tesla.

    Straubel said the company already has more material than it can process from spent consumer batteries from lawnmowers, cellphones and toothbrushes, as well as production scraps from lithium-ion battery manufacturing.

    The company says it can recover more than 95% of the elements in a spent battery, including lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, and copper. The metals are then used to make anode and cathode components for new battery cells.

    Redwood Materials “is going to play this outsized role in bringing the batteries supply chain home — because you’re focused on the pieces that we don’t have in the United States,″ Granholm told employees at Thursday’s event. “You guys are making history in this.″

    Redwood Materials is expected to create about 3,400 construction jobs and employ about 1,600 full-time workers, the department said.

    Redwood Materials’ history in Nevada started under former Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval, who was in attendance on Thursday. It continued under Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak before the loan was conditionally approved under Lombardo, who acknowledged he was a latecomer to negotiations. The investments and subsequent jobs help fulfill a campaign pledge by Lombardo and past governors to diversify Nevada’s casino and tourism-based economy.

    “This is what we’re going to have to do to have success in the state of Nevada,” Lombardo said. “We can’t have all our eggs in one basket.”

    In December, the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development awarded $105 million in tax incentives to Redwood, the second-largest capital investment in the office’s history, behind Tesla.

    Last month, the Energy Department announced a conditional loan of $700 million to an Australian company to mine lithium in northern Nevada as the U.S. seeks domestic supplies for the key component in electric vehicle batteries.

    Redwood also has announced plans to build a $3.5 billion battery manufacturing and recycling factory in South Carolina.

    Once fully operational, the battery materials campus in McCarran, Nevada, outside Reno, will be the first domestic facility to support production of anode copper foil and cathode active materials for a lithium-ion battery manufacturing process. The process would recycle end-of-life battery and production scrap and remanufacture it into critical materials, the Energy Department said in a blog post.

    Straubel, Redwood’s CEO, told The Associated Press last year that recycling battery materials will help the U.S. establish its own electric-vehicle supply chain. China now dominates the EV supply chain, including critical minerals needed for EV batteries.

    “Redwood fills a critical gap in that whole piece, and our goal is to close the loop on all the materials that we’ve already mined and produced into products, keep them in the regions where they were bought and are being used,″ Straubel told the AP. “Every battery that we can recycle is one battery worth of materials that we don’t need to mine again.″

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    Daly reported from Washington.

    ___

    Associated Press auto writer Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this story.

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  • Battery recycling company founded by former Tesla chief technology officer wins $2 billion loan from Energy Dept

    Battery recycling company founded by former Tesla chief technology officer wins $2 billion loan from Energy Dept

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    Redwood Materials, a Nevada company that recycles batteries for electric vehicles and was founded by Tesla’s former chief technology officer, has won a $2 billion green energy loan from the Biden administration.

    It secured the conditional loan from the Energy Department’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, which helped Tesla more than a decade ago.

    Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced the grant Thursday to dozens of employees at Redwood’s facility in Nevada with Gov. Joe Lombardo.

    “This region is leading the way to a broader story of what is happening in the country,” Granholm said, pointing to a map of 80 manufacturing or supply chain companies that are expanding or opening in the U.S. Most have been announced in response to the infrastructure law President Joe Biden signed in 2021 and the climate law he signed last year, she said.

    Battery recycling will help the U.S. establish its own electric-vehicle supply chain, a major goal of the Biden administration as it seeks to move away from gas-powered cars in the larger fight against climate change. Mr. Biden also has promoted domestic production of critical minerals used in EVs and other electronics, as part of the climate fight and to counter China’s longtime dominance in the supply chain.

    The Energy Department said its conditional commitment demonstrates its intent to finance the Nevada project, but several steps remain before officials approve a final loan.

    Redwood Materials was founded in 2017 by Jeffrey “JB” Straubel, Tesla’s former chief technology officer. It now has more than 300 employees who recycle used batteries and has supply contracts with Ford and with Panasonic, which makes batteries for Tesla.

    Straubel said the company already has more material than it can process from spent consumer batteries from lawnmowers, cellphones and toothbrushes, as well as production scraps from lithium-ion battery manufacturing.

    The company says it can recover more than 95% of the elements in a spent battery, including lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, and copper. The metals are then used to make anode and cathode components for new battery cells.

    Redwood Materials “is going to play this outsized role in bringing the batteries supply chain home — because you’re focused on the pieces that we don’t have in the United States,” Granholm told employees at Thursday’s event. “You guys are making history in this.”

    Redwood Materials is expected to create about 3,400 construction jobs and employ about 1,600 full-time workers, the department said. The company’s history in Nevada started under former Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval, who was in attendance on Thursday. It continued under Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak before the loan was conditionally approved under Lombardo, who acknowledged he was a latecomer to negotiations. The investments and subsequent jobs help fulfill a campaign pledge by Lombardo and past governors to diversify Nevada’s casino and tourism-based economy.

    “This is what we’re going to have to do to have success in the state of Nevada,” Lombardo said. “We can’t have all our eggs in one basket.”

    In December, the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development awarded $105 million in tax incentives to Redwood, the second-largest capital investment in the office’s history, behind Tesla.

    Last month, the Energy Department announced a conditional loan of $700 million to an Australian company to mine lithium in northern Nevada as the U.S. seeks domestic supplies for the key component in electric vehicle batteries.

    Redwood also has announced plans to build a $3.5 billion battery manufacturing and recycling factory in South Carolina.

    Once fully operational, the battery materials campus in McCarran, Nevada, outside Reno, will be the first domestic facility to support production of anode copper foil and cathode active materials for a lithium-ion battery manufacturing process. The process would recycle end-of-life battery and production scrap and remanufacture it into critical materials, the Energy Department said in a blog post.

    Straubel, Redwood’s CEO, told The Associated Press last year that recycling battery materials will help the U.S. establish its own electric-vehicle supply chain. China now dominates the EV supply chain, including critical minerals needed for EV batteries.

    “Redwood fills a critical gap in that whole piece, and our goal is to close the loop on all the materials that we’ve already mined and produced into products, keep them in the regions where they were bought and are being used,” Straubel told the AP. “Every battery that we can recycle is one battery worth of materials that we don’t need to mine again.”

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  • House Republicans seek new restrictions on use of U.S. oil stockpile

    House Republicans seek new restrictions on use of U.S. oil stockpile

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    For the second time this month, House Republicans are seeking to restrict presidential use of the nation’s emergency oil stockpile — a proposal that has already drawn a White House veto threat.

    A GOP bill set for a vote Friday would require the government to offset any non-emergency withdrawals from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve with new drilling on public lands and oceans. Republicans accuse President Joe Biden of abusing the reserve for political reasons to keep gas prices low, while Biden says tapping the reserve was needed last year in response to a ban on Russian oil imports following President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

    Mr. Biden withdrew 180 million barrels from the strategic reserve over several months, bringing the stockpile to its lowest level since the 1980s. The administration said last month it will start to replenish the reserve now that oil prices have gone down.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre attacked the latest GOP proposal, which follows a bill approved two weeks ago that would prohibit the Energy Department from selling oil from the strategic reserve to companies owned or influenced by the Chinese Communist Party.

    “House Republicans will vote to raise gas prices on American families … and help Putin’s war aims by interfering with our ability to release oil,” Jean-Pierre said, referring to the current GOP bill. “These extreme policies would subject working families to immense financial pain and balloon our deficit, all just to benefit the wealthiest taxpayers and big corporations.”

    Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, appearing with Jean-Pierre at the White House, said the bill would make it “harder to offer Americans relief in the future” from oil disruptions that could raise prices.

    Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee and sponsored the GOP bill, accused Granholm and the White House of multiple misleading claims, including an erroneous assertion that the bill could affect use of the reserve during a presidentially declared emergency.

    “At a time when gas prices are on the rise, Secretary Granholm and the Biden administration need to be transparent with the American people about their efforts to cover up how they’ve abused the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as an election-year gimmick,” McMorris Rodgers said.

    “Republicans want durable, long-lasting relief at the pump. The best way to do this is by unleashing American energy,” which her legislation helps accomplish, added McMorris Rodgers, of Washington state. 

    Though the measure may pass in the Republican-controlled House, it’s not likely to reach the floor in the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats.

    The heated rhetoric is part of a larger fight over oil drilling and climate change. Republicans say restrictions on oil leasing imposed by the Biden administration hamper U.S. energy production and harm the economy, while Democrats tout a sweeping climate law approved last year as a crucial step to wean the nation off fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas. The measure authorizes billions in spending to boost renewable energy such as wind and solar power and includes incentives for Americans to buy millions of electric cars, heat pumps, solar panels and more efficient appliances.

    Mr. Biden, citing the dangers of climate change, canceled the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline in his first days in office and suspended new oil and gas leases on federal lands. The moratorium has since been lifted, under court order, but Republicans complain that lease sales for new drilling rights are still limited.

    Mr. Biden campaigned on pledges to end new drilling on public lands, and climate activists have pushed him to move faster to shut down oil leasing. Fossil fuels extracted from public lands account for about 20% of energy-related U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, making them a prime target for emissions reductions intended to slow global warming.

    “Whether on land or at sea, oil drilling poses an unacceptable risk for our wildlife, wild places and waterways,” said Lisa Frank of Environment America, an advocacy group. “When we drill, we spill. At a time when we should be moving away from this destructive, dangerous practice — and expanding use of renewable power — this bill doubles down on the outmoded energy of the past.”

    Frank urged lawmakers to reject the GOP bill and instead move to permanently ban new drilling off U.S. coasts and in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

    Conservative and industry groups support the bill.

    “We can continue making the Strategic Petroleum Reserve the nation’s sole response to future disruptions, or we can also utilize more of the vast oil supplies sitting beneath the lands and offshore areas currently kept off limits by the president,” the Competitive Enterprise Institute and other conservative groups said in a letter to Congress.

    The Treasury Department estimates that release of oil from the emergency stockpile lowered prices at the pump by up to 40 cents per gallon. Gasoline prices averaged about $3.50 per gallon on Thursday, down from just over $5 per gallon at their peak in June, according to the AAA auto club.

    Morris Rodgers accused Mr. Biden of using the reserve to “cover up his failed policies” that she said are driving up energy prices and inflation. Average gas prices are up more than 30 cents from a month ago and are higher than when Biden took office in January 2021, she and other Republicans noted.

    “Millions of Americans are paying more at the pump as a result of the Biden administration’s radical ‘rush-to-green’ agenda that has shut down American energy,” McMorris Rodgers said.

    Granholm, citing thousands of unused leases by oil companies, said GOP claims of obstructionism on drilling were off-base. “There’s nothing standing in the way of domestic oil and gas production,” she said, a claim McMorris Rodgers disputed.

    “There are plenty of barriers to unleashing domestic oil and gas production, including burdensome regulations and this administration’s discouragement of financial investment in domestic oil and gas industries,” she said, noting that U.S. oil production is well below its 2019 peak of 13 million barrels of oil a day.

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  • Oppenheimer wrongly stripped of security clearance, US says

    Oppenheimer wrongly stripped of security clearance, US says

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration has reversed a decades-old decision to revoke the security clearance of Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist called the father of the atomic bomb for his leading role in World War II’s Manhattan Project.

    U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the 1954 decision by the Atomic Energy Commission was made using a “flawed process” that violated the commission’s own regulations.

    “As time has passed, more evidence has come to light of the bias and unfairness of the process that Dr. Oppenheimer was subjected to while the evidence of his loyalty and love of country have only been further affirmed,” Granholm said in a statement on Friday.

    Oppenheimer, who died in 1967, led the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. The theoretical physicist was later accused of having communist sympathies and his security clearance was revoked following a four-week, closed-door hearing.

    In stripping Oppenheimer of his clearance, the Atomic Energy Commission did not allege that he had revealed or mishandled classified information, nor was his loyalty to the country questioned, according to Granholm’s order. The commission, however, concluded there were “fundamental defects” in his character.

    Years later, an Atomic Energy Commission lawyer concluded after an internal review that “the system failed” and a “substantial injustice was done to a loyal American,” according to the secretary’s order.

    Granholm said the commission’s decision was driven by a desire among its political leadership to “discredit Oppenheimer in public debates over nuclear weapons policy.”

    “Such political motives must have no place in our personnel security process,” she wrote.

    U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont applauded the reversal, saying the 1954 decision followed a “manifestly unjust and unethical hearing that would be resoundingly condemned today.”

    “This decision reaffirms that government scientists, whether renowned like Oppenheimer or a technician doing his or her daily job — including those willing to raise safety concerns or to express unpopular opinions on matters of national security — can do so freely and that their cases will be fairly reviewed based on facts, not personal animus or politics,” Leahy said in a statement.

    The decision comes as the story of Oppenheimer is headed to the big screen. Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” film is expected to be released in theaters in July. It’s based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” and stars Cillian Murphy in the title role.

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  • Oppenheimer wrongly stripped of security clearance, US says

    Oppenheimer wrongly stripped of security clearance, US says

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    WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has reversed a decades-old decision to revoke the security clearance of Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist called the father of the atomic bomb for his leading role in World War II’s Manhattan Project.

    U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the 1954 decision by the Atomic Energy Commission was made using a “flawed process” that violated the commission’s own regulations.

    “As time has passed, more evidence has come to light of the bias and unfairness of the process that Dr. Oppenheimer was subjected to while the evidence of his loyalty and love of country have only been further affirmed,” Granholm said in a statement on Friday.

    Oppenheimer, who died in 1967, led the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. The theoretical physicist was later accused of having communist sympathies and his security clearance was revoked following a four-week, closed-door hearing.

    In stripping Oppenheimer of his clearance, the Atomic Energy Commission did not allege that he had revealed or mishandled classified information, nor was his loyalty to the country questioned, according to Granholm’s order. The commission, however, concluded there were “fundamental defects” in his character.

    Years later, an Atomic Energy Commission lawyer concluded after an internal review that “the system failed” and a “substantial injustice was done to a loyal American,” according to the secretary’s order.

    Granholm said the commission’s decision was driven by a desire among its political leadership to “discredit Oppenheimer in public debates over nuclear weapons policy.”

    “Such political motives must have no place in our personnel security process,” she wrote.

    U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont applauded the reversal, saying the 1954 decision followed a “manifestly unjust and unethical hearing that would be resoundingly condemned today.”

    “This decision reaffirms that government scientists, whether renowned like Oppenheimer or a technician doing his or her daily job — including those willing to raise safety concerns or to express unpopular opinions on matters of national security — can do so freely and that their cases will be fairly reviewed based on facts, not personal animus or politics,” Leahy said in a statement.

    The decision comes as the story of Oppenheimer is headed to the big screen. Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” film is expected to be released in theaters in July. It’s based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” and stars Cillian Murphy in the title role.

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  • Fusion breakthrough is a milestone for climate, clean energy

    Fusion breakthrough is a milestone for climate, clean energy

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists announced Tuesday that they have for the first time produced more energy in a fusion reaction than was used to ignite it — a major breakthrough in the decades-long quest to harness the process that powers the sun.

    Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California achieved the result last week, the Energy Department said. Known as a net energy gain, the goal has been elusive because fusion happens at such high temperatures and pressures that it is incredibly difficult to control.

    The breakthrough will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and other officials said.

    “Ignition allows us to replicate for the first time certain conditions that are found only in the stars and the sun,″ Granholm told a news conference in Washington. “This milestone moves us one significant step closer” to having zero-carbon fusion energy “powering our society.”

    Fusion ignition is “one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century,″ Granholm said, adding that the breakthrough “will go down in the history books.”

    Appearing with Granholm, White House science adviser Arati Prabhakar called the fusion ignition achieved Dec. 5 “a tremendous example of what perseverance really can achieve” and “an engineering marvel beyond belief.″

    Proponents of fusion hope it could one day displace fossil fuels and other traditional energy sources. Producing carbon-free energy that powers homes and businesses from fusion is still decades away. But researchers said the announcement marked a significant leap forward.

    “It’s almost like it’s a starting gun going off,” said professor Dennis Whyte, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a leader in fusion research. “We should be pushing towards making fusion energy systems available to tackle climate change and energy security.”

    Kim Budil, director of the Livermore Lab, said there are “very significant hurdles” to commercial use of fusion technology, but advances in recent years mean the technology is likely to be widely used in “a few decades” rather than 50 or 60 years as previously expected.

    Fusion works by pressing hydrogen atoms into each other with such force that they combine into helium, releasing enormous amounts of energy and heat. Unlike other nuclear reactions, it doesn’t create radioactive waste.

    President Joe Biden called the breakthrough a good example of the need to continue to invest in research and development. “Look what’s going on from the Department of Energy on the nuclear front. There’s a lot of good news on the horizon,” he said at the White House.

    Billions of dollars and decades of work have gone into fusion research that has produced exhilarating results — for fractions of a second. Previously, researchers at the National Ignition Facility, the division of Lawrence Livermore where the success took place, used 192 lasers and temperatures multiple times hotter than the center of the sun to create an extremely brief fusion reaction.

    The lasers focused an enormous amount of heat on a miniature spherical capsule, said Marvin Adams, deputy administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, an Energy Department agency. The result was a superheated plasma environment where a reaction generated about 1.5 times more energy than was contained in the light used to produce it.

    Riccardo Betti, a professor at the University of Rochester and expert in laser fusion, said there’s a long road ahead before the net energy gain leads to sustainable electricity.

    He likened the breakthrough to when humans first learned that refining oil into gasoline and igniting it could produce an explosion. “You still don’t have the engine, and you still don’t have the tires,” Betti said. “You can’t say that you have a car.”

    The net energy gain achievement applied to the fusion reaction itself, not the total amount of power it took to operate the lasers and run the project. For fusion to be viable, it will need to produce significantly more power and for longer periods.

    Budil said people sometimes joke that the Livermore lab, known as LLNL, “stands for ‘Lasers, Lasers, Nothing but Lasers.’” But she said the lab’s motto “sums up our approach nicely: Science and technology on a mission.”

    It is incredibly difficult to control the physics of stars. Whyte said the fuel has to be hotter than the center of the sun. The fuel does not want to stay hot — it wants to leak out and get cold. Containing it is a challenge, he said.

    Results from the California lab exceeded expectations, said Jeremy Chittenden, a professor at Imperial College in London specializing in plasma physics.

    Although there’s a long way to go to turn fusion into a usable power source, Chittenden said, the lab’s achievement makes him optimistic that it may someday be “the ideal power source that we thought it would be” — one that emits no carbon and runs on an abundant form of hydrogen that can be extracted from seawater.

    One approach to fusion turns hydrogen into plasma, an electrically charged gas, which is then controlled by humongous magnets. This method is being explored in France in a collaboration among 35 countries called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, as well as by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a private company.

    Last year the teams working on those projects on two continents announced significant advancements in the vital magnets needed for their work.

    Carolyn Kuranz, a University of Michigan professor and experimental plasma physicist, hoped the result would help bring “increased interest and vigor” to fusion research — including from private industry, which she and others said will be needed to get fusion energy to the grid.

    “If we want to prevent further climate change, we are going to need diverse options of energy production to deploy,” Kuranz said. “And nuclear energy — both fission and fusion — really must be a part of that equation. We’re not going to get there with renewables alone.”

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    Daly reported from Washington, Burakoff from New York, Phillis from St. Louis and McDermott from Providence, R.I.

    ___

    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Biden grants PG&E $1 billion to keep Diablo Canyon nuclear plant open

    Biden grants PG&E $1 billion to keep Diablo Canyon nuclear plant open

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    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 and provides 8.6% of the state’s total electricity and 17% of the state’s zero-carbon electricity. Diablo Canyon 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 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 administration has argued that nuclear power is a vital way to combat climate change and achieve the president’s commitment to 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 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 Diablo Canyon and “support reliability statewide and provide an onramp for more clean energy projects to come online.”

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  • Poland chooses US to build its first nuclear power plant

    Poland chooses US to build its first nuclear power plant

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    WARSAW, Poland — Poland says it has chosen the U.S. government and Westinghouse to build its first nuclear power plant, announcing an important step in its efforts to burn less coal and gain greater energy independence.

    Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said late Friday that Poland’s nuclear energy project will use the “reliable, safe technology” of Westinghouse Electric Company, saying a strong Poland-U.S. alliance “guarantees the success of our joint initiatives.”

    Poland has been planning for many years to build a nuclear power plant to gain greater energy independence and replace aging coal plants in a country with some of the worst levels of air pollution in Europe.

    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and its use of energy as a tool amid a larger standoff with the West, has added greater importance to Poland’s search for energy alternatives.

    U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the $40 billion project would create or sustain more than 100,000 jobs for American workers.

    “This is a HUGE step in strengthening our relationship with Poland to create energy security for future generations to come. We are excited to continue this partnership to drive forward a clean energy transition with our counterparts in Europe,” Granholm tweeted.

    “This announcement also sends a clear message to Russia: We will not let them weaponize energy any longer,” Granholm said. “The West will stand together against this unprovoked aggression, while also diversifying energy supply chains and bolstering climate cooperation.”

    The deal is for the first three reactors of a nuclear power plant that is to be built in northern Poland, with officials saying it should start producing electricity in 2033. Poland had also considered offers from France and South Korea.

    The United States is one of the most important allies of NATO-member Poland. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February it increased its military presence in the country, creating a permanent presence for the first time, and using Poland as a hub for sending weapons to Ukraine.

    State Assets Minister Jacek Sasin suggested there could still be a role for South Korea in the project, saying that “this is not our last word” and that more talks are being held in Seoul next week concerning the large nuclear energy project.

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