Livermore, Alameda lose new $1 billion nuclear fusion site to Albuquerque

Following a months-long search for a new $1 billion nuclear fusion site, Fremont-based energy startup company Pacific Fusion announced the winner is Albuquerque, New Mexico, which beat out Bay Area bids from both Livermore and Alameda.

Pacific Fusion’s mission is to be using fusion – the process of smashing two atoms together to produce energy – as a renewable energy source by 2030. Fusion, the same process which powers the sun, is the opposition of nuclear fission, which is the process of splitting an atom to generate energy.

“Commercializing fusion energy will require the best talent from both states,” Keith LeChien, Pacific Fusion’s co-founder and chief technology officer, said in a statement Monday. “California and New Mexico will share in that success as we continue to expand our operations while we build.”

The city of Albuquerque said in a statement that local and state officials offered the company a total of $20 million upfront in economic development and incentive funds, as well as a $776 million bond package that essentially give the company a 20-year property tax break.

Livermore and Alameda officials unsuccessfully offered their own tax incentive packages. In Alameda, officials also offered a purchase option for a 13-acre plot of prime, undeveloped real estate on the city’s Alameda Point island, home to the former Naval Air Station. Livermore boasted of close proximity to expert scientists and resources at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that previously shook up the nuclear science world in 2022 when they used fusion to recreate the power of the sun – a world first.

But none of this was enough to woo Pacific Fusion to the Tri-Valley or the East Bay, in the face of massive public funding promised to the company by New Mexico officials, and the cost of living and doing business in California, according to leaders in both Bay Area contenders.

Livermore Mayor John Marchand said in an interview Monday that the public funds New Mexico offered to Pacific Fusion was “something that the company board couldn’t walk away from.”

“That’s something that Livermore has no control over,” Marchand said. “Of course I’m disappointed, but it wasn’t for any lack of effort on our part.”

Marchand said he still has high hopes for his city’s tech future. “I think that if fusion emission is going to succeed, it’s going to be here in Livermore, because we were the first place to achieve it,” he said.

He added that his city learned how to better streamline certain processes to help businesses move into Livermore faster over the last several months, and that “in that regard, we won.”

“I think Livermore is better for having gone through this exercise,” Marchand said. “We did the best we possibly could.”

Alameda Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft said she largely blamed the state’s housing costs for driving the energy startup to Albuquerque, where single-family homes can be had for $350,000.

“We know that we did everything right, and the thing we could have done better, we were told, is it did come done to the cost of living,” Ezzy Ashcraft said in an interview. “We had a feeling all along…that if we didn’t get them to come to Alameda, we were going to lose them to another state, not another place in California.”

Even still, Ezzy Ashcraft said she expects Alameda Point will soon find a new business to develop the site Pacific Fusion passed up on, though she declined to share if any businesses were in line yet.

“Trust me, there is lots of interest in Alameda Point and other different locations. We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing. It’s just a matter of so many other factors that a company has to consider,” Ezzy Ashcraft said. “They say one door closes and another door opens, and I truly believe that.”