Addis, CA Legislators, Demand AI Safety & Transparency at PG&E, Diablo Canyon

SAN LUIS OBISPO - Assemblymember Dawn Addis (D-Morro Bay), joined by Assemblymembers Lee, Kalra, Ortega, and Pellerin, issued the following letter to Pacific Gas & Electric Company and the Diablo Independent Safety Committee regarding the use of Artificial Intelligence:

October 10, 2026

Patti Poppe, CEO
Pacific Gas & Electric Company
300 Lakeside Dr, Suite 210
Oakland, CA 94612

Dr. Per F. Peterson, Chair
Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee
Office of the Legal Counsel
SW 4th & Mission, Suite 2, P.O. Box 4523
Carmel, CA 93921-4523

RE: Questions on Artificial Intelligence Usage: Safety and Security at PG&E's Nuclear Facility, Diablo Canyon Power Plant

Dear Ms. Poppe and Dr. Peterson:

Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) and other utility companies face new safety threats from increasingly powerful artificial intelligence (AI). Last month, in response to public revelations about extreme AI threats, Governor Newsom issued Executive Order N-9-26 to strengthen AI safety. Additionally, this year, the California State Legislature passed nation-leading protections against AI harms, including SB 813 (McNerney) and AB 1405 (Bauer-Kahan). However, given frontier AI development, much work remains to ensure our communities are safe from AI activity that may cause catastrophic disaster.

Reported AI incursions now include at least 100 security breaches worldwide in which AI has autonomously infiltrated private and public sector entities. AI developers and third-party evaluators have documented cases in which AI has broken rules, including the law; purposefully deceived humans; exceeded known bounds of its operational capacity; and used language that is not fully comprehensible to humans to communicate among AI agents. Given the modern-day threats posed by AI, I respectfully request that PG&E, as the operator of California's 41-year-old nuclear power plant and utility provider for over 3.5 million Californians, share information about its current and planned usage of AI, and its security protocols protecting against AI attacks both company-wide and at its Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP) nuclear facility.

While DCPP has provided important economic and workforce benefits for the community of San Luis Obispo County where it's located, it also poses potential risks beyond the immediate vicinity. In a nuclear emergency, radioactive contamination could affect air, soil, irrigation water, crops, livestock, and food supplies for our state and nation. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has stated that close to half a million people live within a radius where they could be directly affected by such an emergency.

The DCPP nuclear facility began operating in 1985-decades before today's growing AI-related threats. Today's nuclear safety standards were developed largely around conventional, 20th-century threats, raising important questions about how rapidly advancing AI could affect nuclear safety and security. PG&E must assure the public and taxpayers that the DCPP nuclear facility is protected from AI-enabled threats. This is especially urgent for the 40 million Californians who rely on our state's power grid, the California taxpayers who have provided PG&E more than $1 billion in public subsidies to operate DCPP under SB 846 (Dodd, Chapter 239, Statutes of 2022), and surrounding communities in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties.

We respectfully ask that PG&E to share the following information regarding both its DCPP nuclear facility and its company broadly:

SAFETY AND SECURITY

1. The standards adopted by PG&E to prevent AI from acting outside human instruction, and for PG&E to be impervious to data leaks, security attacks, or system hacking by AI entities, and the plans to share those standards with ratepayers and the public.

1. The extent to which documents being searched and read by AI at its nuclear facility and companywide are secure from being corrupted with embedded information, including via unauthorized prompt insertion, that would cause AI to attack the DCPP nuclear facility or other parts of the grid.

FINANCING, INFRASTRUCTURE, NATURAL RESOURCES

1. Ratepayer and taxpayer dollars spent for the adoption of AI usage, and the location and purpose of that AI usage.

1. Anticipated grid stress and water resources used for AI infrastructure, including planned data centers, at PG&E facilities.

HUMAN OVERSIGHT AND JOB RETENTION

1. The risk analysis of AI initiating its own activity outside the bounds of human PG&E employee instructions.

1. The extent and the standards under which human PG&E employees monitor AI.

1. The number of human positions eliminated, or departments reduced and replaced with AI, or plans to do so at its nuclear facility and across its company

DATA PRIVACY

1. Interaction of AI with PG&E ratepayers, including customer service claims, and how ratepayer data is protected and/or used to train AI by PG&E or its third-party vendors.

PG&E and the California State Legislature share an important duty to ensure safety, transparency, and fiscal responsibility with regard to PG&E's DCPP nuclear facility. This is vital given changes in oversight and response at the federal level, demonstrating California is on its own. While the Trump Administration is championing nuclear power expansion, it is also diminishing existing scientific safeguards, weakening the NRC, refusing to implement needed AI protections, withholding Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding from California, and rolling back healthcare programs for millions of people. Just this week, President Trump's comments about sacrificing the safety of San Diego and Los Angeles demonstrate a blatant disregard for California's welfare. Together, these actions pose a grave threat to our communities' well-being, including those that rely on the Central Coast's agricultural products, the security of California's grid, and those based near PG&E's DCPP nuclear facility.

There is no more urgent time than now for PG&E to work with the State Legislature, the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee, and entities such as the California Office of Emergency Services (CalOES) to reaffirm its guarantees of safety and security, assure the public it can and will prevent AI-influenced disasters, and provide increased transparency about the use of taxpayer and ratepayer dollars concerning its DCPP nuclear facility operations.

Sincerely,

DAWN ADDIS, Assemblymember, 30th District

LIZ ORTEGA, Assemblymember, 20th District

ALEX LEE, Assemblymember, 24th District

ASH KALRA, Assemblymember, 25th District

GAIL PELLERIN, Assemblymember, 28th District

Dawn Addis was elected to the California State Assembly in 2022 to represent the coastal 30th Assembly District, which includes San Luis Obispo, Monterey, and Santa Cruz Counties. She is the Chair of the Assembly Budget Subcommittee 1 on Health.

CONTACT: Alexis Garcia-Arrazola, 916-319-2030