Owen Klinsky
Contributor
A shuttered nuclear power plant with a checkered past will partially be coming back online after Microsoft obtained a deal to purchase energy from one of the plant’s reactors, according to a Friday press release.
The 20-year power purchase agreement, which the tech giant secured with Constellation Energy, would bring back the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania — the site of a 1979 meltdown that resulted in a large-scale evacuation of nearby pregnant women and school-age children. The project aims to provide power for Microsoft data centers as tech companies push to expand electricity production to support their artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud storage needs, the release says. (RELATED: Biden-Harris Admin’s Multi-Billion Dollar Electric School Bus Program Is A Huge Gift To China, House Report Finds)
“Powering industries critical to our nation’s global economic and technological competitiveness, including data centers, requires an abundance of energy that is carbon-free and reliable every hour of every day, and nuclear plants are the only energy sources that can consistently deliver on that promise,” Joe Dominguez, president and CEO of Constellation, stated in the release alongside Microsoft. “We look forward to bringing [the Three Mile Island plant] back with a new name and a renewed mission to serve as an economic engine for Pennsylvania.”
The agreement would bring back Unit 1 at Three Mile Island, which was shuttered in 2019 for “economic reasons,” according to Constellation’s statement. Unit 1 is adjacent to the Unit 2 reactor that caused the worst nuclear meltdown in U.S. history on March 28, 1979, which results in 40% of people evacuating the area.
The Three Mile Island power plant will have a capacity of 835 megawatts, enough to power more than 700,000 homes. It is expected to create 3,400 direct and indirect jobs, according to the press release.
The decision to reopen the Three Mile Island reactor comes as tech companies are increasingly looking to nuclear energy to power their AI and data center needs, with Amazon Web Services spending $650 million on a nuclear-powered data center in Pennsylvania earlier this year. The trend could affect power grid reliability and affordability as it provides the businesses with “first dibs” on electricity, Pennsylvania Consumer Advocate Patrick Cicero told the WSJ in July.
Nuclear power has aroused public suspicion, largely due to incidents like Three Mile Island, Fukushima and Chernobyl, in which reactor meltdowns caused radiation to flood areas surrounding nuclear power plants. However, it could be a viable pathway to reducing emissions and accomplishing the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of having the U.S. power sector reach net-zero emissions by 2035.
“This is a valuable opportunity to invest in clean, carbon-free and affordable power — on the heels of the hottest year in Earth’s history,” Pennsylvania state Rep. Tom Mehaffie said in the Constellation press release. “This will transform the local economy and presents a rare opportunity to power our economy with reliable clean energy that we can count on.”
Constellation and Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
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“Renewables” are better described as “weather dependent”.
Always asynchronous, sometime functioning, depending upon the weather.
“Asynchronous” doesn’t really tell the story why “renewables” aren’t friendly to power grids.
There are several things that ordinary synchronous helps with maintaining grid stability.
One is inertia, where the rotating mass provides energy reserve from acting as a flywheel with added benefit of the damper windings provide additional increases in power when line frequency drops below synchronous frequency and additional decreases in power when line frequency rises above synchronous frequency.
Another is that the governors on most of the prime movers have some proportional control in the feedback loop so output power will be reduced when line frequency rises and output will be increased when line frequency drops. This happens on a longer time scale than the inertia.
Finally, the nature of a synchronous machine with respect to voltage regulation also provides some inherent stabilization of the line voltage. Unlike a capacitor providing reactive power, when the line voltage increases, the reactive power output decreases.
It’s funny, I thought he meant out of sync with the demand, i.e. like when the load increases as people get home from work, but the sun is going down.
I like ‘intermittent’.
How about “the unreliables”?
What on earth has happened to Germany? There’s a wonderful article at Politico on their recent decline.
Ignorant Politicians.are causing the problems in Germany.
And in that respect, they are not alone.
Self-induced decline. It’s coming for us next.
Self induced only in part. The KGB had a huge program in the 1970s to destabilize Germany and cripple its nuclear power program. It did this in part by lavish support of the Green Party. Now, 50 years later, the program is beaing fruit. Germany has become completely dependent on Russian oil and gas.
If Microsoft will be maintaining the control systems software, and they announce an update is scheduled,
run for your lives!!!
Don’t worry, not even Microsoft are that daft. They’ll run the plant on DOS 2.0
Actually DOS 5.0 was bulletproof and very usable. It was all progress in reverse after that until NT 5.0 . NT 5.5 (a/k/a XP) was the absolute peak. Since then straight into the toilet. Word has disimproved since Word 2.0. We are now headed for the dystopia of Office 365 where Microsoft will copyright your words and lease them back to you for as much as they can squeeze out of you. You will learn to love Big Brother.
“XP) was the absolute peak. Since then straight into the toilet.”
Yep.
I had a funny (not at the time) experience with a Microsoft fanboi. We had to maintain test procedures in M$ Word format, I do not remember why, and otherwise ran Sun workstations (this was before Linux). Something trivial had changed which changed the PROM checksum which required updating the test procedure with the new date and checksum. NOTHING ELSE in the test procedure changed.
We had learned that M$ Word was terrible at maintaining page numbers, but if print preview had them right, they would print right, and the most common failure was the final page showing as “Page 35 of 34”. You could delete and add a space, do all sorts of stupid little tricks, and eventually it would come out as “Page 34 of 34” and you could actually print the latest copy.
Sometimes you could get it right the first time, maybe second or third. This particular time, I swear I had been trying for half an hour, probably cussing out Bill Gates for all I knew. Then I heard a noise, fanboi was standing behind me, watching. “There are no bugs in Microsoft software. It’s always operator error.” I showed him the “35 of 34” and he didn’t care. It was my fault. I told him to get lost, refused to answer whatever inane question he had, he eventually left, and Word eventually got the page numbering right.
Win 11 sucks- their worse ever. I have Office 365. When I try to write something in Word- it tries to read my mind and it’ll show what it thinks I want next. Sometimes it gets right. Perhaps it helps a bit but it seems to be not really necessary. I’m surprised it hasn’t started talking to me yet, like my Satanic high school English teacher- or, maybe like HAL.
Nah… They’ll run their software from the cloud to make updates easier, like CrowdStrike does. That’ll also make debugin’ and testin’ easier :<)
That’s OK, they’ll use the beta version to operate the nuclear reactor.
Whenever the media describes the reactor accident at Three Mile Island, they always cite the (temporary) evacuation of nearby residents, but they ALWAYS leave out the part that not a single resident in the TMI area was ever actually exposed to any excessive radioactive contamination.
None, zip, nada.
Windmills and solar cells have killed a helluva lot more than the zero citizens killed by nuclear power plants in more than 60 years of commercial operations.
You are right–there was no excess radiation released into nearby communities. This article explicitly says the reactor meltdown caused radiation to flood nearby communities. Not true at all.
I frequently fly into the Harrisburg airport and TMI is just to the left of the approach from the south. The shoreline communities (yes it is an island) are small agricultural communities, for the most part.
That is, of course, overlooking the multiple deaths caused by the 1986 Chernobly power reactor meltdown accident and the one death attributed to the 2011 Fukushima multiple power reactor meltdowns.
“Japan has acknowledged for the first time that a worker at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami more than seven years ago, died from radiation exposure.”
(source: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1LL0NV/ )
Note that the Reuters article was published September 5, 2018.
Facts matter.
“Zero citizens” (implying US) have died from “commercial operations” (also implying US”). This statement is factual as it stands as the examples you provided were outside the US. The USN has an impressive safety record with the Naval Nuclear Propulsion program.
How many people have been killed in NYC alone from battery fires?
In 1986 there was an explosion at the Kerr McGee nuclear fuel plant
in Gore OK that killed one and left many injured. It also released 14.5
tons of radioactive gas. The explosion caused severe contamination
of soil and groundwater across the 600 acre site. I personally know
one of the guys who came in to clean things up. He worked in Hanford
WA previously.,,.Other than the subs and carriers the Navy went to gas
fired turbines after using nukes for a reason.
Did you hear that Illegal immigrants? Don’t come to Oklahoma because it is contaminated with nuclear radiation.
The rruth is the Gore incident is a nothing-burger. But don’t tell the illegal immigrants.
Sequoia Fuels did the clean up in Gore. I know one of the
principles involved and other things I can’t discuss here..
Was the Kerr McGee plant producing fuel for commercial or military reactors?
IIRC, the main reasons for smaller surface ships going to gas turbines was cost and weight.
IIRC, something like 18 people in NYC were killed by battery fires, with a number of those killed not having anything to do with the batteries that caught on fire.
There are a lot of hazardous nuclear waste sites near or on Indian
reservations. The one in WA state has effected the Yakama Nation in
many ways which is part of the Hanford Site. Nuclear waste
is the most hazardous material ever created by humans. The one
in Gore OK was on or near Cherokee Nation Land. The Navaho
Nation has over 500 abandoned uranium mines that has caused
polluted drinking water which has led to kidney failure and lung
disease for many generations. Look it up…
Those abandoned uranium mines were virtually all Manhattan Project mines, for the most part from the 1940s and 1950s, and were weapons production materials not commercial reactor power plant materials. And there were extremely few deaths due to radiation, mostly the mine workers themselves.
Kerr McGee produced plutonium and other products. The
movie Silkwood was about the plant in Gore OK.
Her family sued and settled after she died.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/464/238/
There was another whistleblower involved also..
Actually, the main advantage of nuclear powered ships and submarines over conventional fueled vessels is the extraordinarily long range, and sustained high submerged speeds of submarines afforded by by nuclear reactors. Small ships don’t have or need extremely long range, nor do the operate submerged – subs and carriers do.
“Other than the subs and carriers”, means all the much less important and capable ships in the US Navy.
How many African kids have been killed by lithium mining accidents, by comparison?
We aren’t discussing lithium battery’s, we’re discussing nuclear power
which has had some major problems with pollution.
My original comment was to the statement that no person had
died from commercial operation of a nuclear operation in this country. That statement is false and I cited how it is false. For that I was
awarded the dreaded rneg WUWT negative marks, oh my…..
The nuclear industry on the reactor side seems well run with
some exceptions. My personal view is that there needs to
be some major improvements in the area of nuclear waste
disposal, which is not happening. The other major concern
involves design. All of the propulsion systems are of
the same design but all of the commercial reactors are of completely
different design.
On the fuel production side there have/is been some large pollution problems. I have some insight to that situation thru a high level
principle who’s entire career has been involved with major clean
up operations. Start with the Silkwood case. Kerr Magee had
employees that were in many cased taken off the street and put to
work with literally no training.
You mean to tell me no other countries in the world have “citizens”? . . . who knew!
You mean to tell me no other countries in the world have “commercial operations”? . . . wow, all those non-capitalistic countries . . . what a pity!
And, finally, most people would not consider the US Navy’s nuclear ships to be engaged in commercial operations.
The point with the USN safety record was to show that power reactors can have a good safety if properly designed and operated. The RBMK design would never have passed AEC/NRC licensing requirements (positive void coefficients is a major no-no).
What most reports of the TMI accident fail to mention is that a melt down was nowhere near as hazardous as had been assumed before TMI. Specifically the radio-iodine release was several orders of magnitude less than what was predicted by accident scenarios developed before TMI. The post accident analysis showed the majority of radio-iodine in the nearby area was from nuclear medicine.
The previous point in this thread was the number of “citizens” killed in commercial nuclear power plant operations over the last 60 years.
I never argued or claimed that US military nuclear reactors—much smaller than the typical size of a land-based commercial power plant reactor—don’t have a stellar safety record. They do . . . at least in the unclassified domain knowledge base.
The RBMKs were primarily for the military production of plutionium. Their electricity production was not the main reason for existence.
So say you. Maybe you are sharing classified information not available to the general public?
Here is what https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant says:
“Construction of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant began in 1972. The plant was meant to have 12 units, made up of six construction phases, and if completed would have been the largest nuclear power plant in the world. The plant would eventually consist of four RBMK-1000 reactors, each capable of producing 1,000 megawatts (MW) of electric power (3,200 MW of thermal power), and the four together produced about 10% of Ukraine’s electricity.“
(my bold emphasis added)
Wiki makes no mention whatsoever of plutonium production at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
The RBMK’s are a modified version of Plutonium production reactors, whereas the TMI PWR is a scaled up version of a naval reactor. The accident at Chernobyl would be difficult to recreate in a PWR as any voiding would cause the reactivity to go down as opposed to up at Chernobyl.
The commercial power plants in the US also have a stellar safety record, which you are ignoring. Not a single, I repeat, not a single citizen has been harmed in any way whatsoever by commercial nuclear power plants in the US.
That statement is falsified by this from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_Nuclear_Generating_Station , which in turn references “Three Mile Island radiation leak investigated”, CNN, November 22, 2009:
“On November 21, 2009, a release of radioactivity occurred inside the containment building of TMI-1 while workers were cutting pipes . . . Approximately 20 employees were treated for mild radiation exposure . . .”
Note the operative phrase in that quote: “were treated for mild radiation exposure”.
Try again . . . even with repeats?
The Soviet Union is not comparable to any other nation on Earth. Those were the same guys who had no problem losing tens of millions of their own citizens to starvation, assassinations, and prison from which nobody emerged alive over the 70 course of its evil existence.
The rest of the first world nations at least do and did respect human health and life.
OT . . . the subject of this thread is accidents at commercial nuclear power plants, not the manner in which governments of various nations act or have acted in the past.
BTW, I believe Red China, with its CCP and known programs of genocide, is quite comparable to the former Soviet Union and maybe even to Russia today.
Not to mention murders!
Facts indeed matter. RBMK reactors were not primarily about electricity production. They were about plutonium production for the Soviet strategic weapons program. Civilian reactor safety procedures had nothing to do with the operation of RBMKs.
See my reply above giving a different explanation for the Chernobyl nuclear power plant’s existence.
Please cite a credible reference supporting your assertion.
One worker died from radiation exposure at Fukushima, 20,000 died from the Tsunami. The nuclear power plant was not the problem. More died in the panic during the evacuation than ever would have died from any radiation exposure resulting from the accident.
Excuse me, but one is obviously greater than “none”.
As regards bringing in ancillary facts, should I cite the number of people that died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a result of radiation exposure?
now figure out how many people have died from diagnostic radiology radiation exposure and tell me if we should tell them they aren’t entitled to their head CT’s mammograms’ and “routine” dental x-rays.
or their week-long ski trip to copper mountain
Japan is not the US, or the EU, or Australia, or where any else of our readers here reside.
Wow, really? . . . who knew!
/sarc
The statistic I rely on is that “More US citizens have been killed from sitting in the passenger seat of Ted Kennedy’s Oldsmobile than from radiation exposure caused by all the US nuclear power plants combined”.
That was probably Trump’s fault too.
Or, more US citizens have been killed by assassins under the watch of Democrat-controlled Secret Service protections than have been killed by commercial nuclear power plant accidents.
Three mile Island disaster was caused by spilling pepsi on the console – the pepsi syndrome
I know that from the SNL skit
story tip
Scientists have captured Earth’s climate over the last 485 million years. Here’s the surprising place we stand now.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/09/19/earth-temperature-global-warming-planet/
hmmmm…. seems like they drew one conclusion when they could have drawn a better one.
They present a single line to represent “Earth’s Climate”. What rubbish.
shuttered in 2019 for “economic reasons”
Why is it profitable in 2024? Offshore wind? There was no AI in 2019. Microsoft AI needs as much power as 700,000 homes.
But in 2019 there were sequestered “cleanup” funds, sealed in escrow, which became possible to “reallocate” to the state and to investors when the plant was shut down.
Cool move, for once, by Microsoft. Somebody should ransom Diablo Canyon, too. Maybe Siemens will pay the nuclear Danegeld, and all but “own” Germany.
“Microsoft AI needs as much power as 700,000 homes.“. I don’t think that can be correct. Each new wind farm is enough to power lots of homes, we are told. So it doesn’t take many wind farms to be enough to power 700,000 homes. So if Microsoft AI needs as much power as 700,000 homes then Microsoft would just use a few wind farms to power their AI. But they don’t, and clearly they won’t.
The answer to this conundrum, of course, is not that Microsoft AI needs more power than 700,000 homes, the answer is that AI needs a different kind of power. Homes are occupied by humans, who can cope with sudden absences of power – they might miss their favourite TV program sometimes, or wait a couple of hours for the kettle to boil, or die of cold, for example. But Humans are used to these little inconveniences. AI is not and must be protected. So AI needs nuclear power, which is a really awful kind of power that no human could ever tolerate. The major benefit is that humans can continue to enjoy wind power, and if they ever have any doubts about it, AI will always be instantly available to explain it all to them. If humans had to do without AI sometimes, well that really would be a disaster.
Wait wait wait… Are you saying.. that… humans… are less important…than “AI”??
The Southwest Power Pool assigns an accredited capacity factor of 14.5% to wind power. I am going to go out on a limb here, and assume that what they are saying is that they expect wind to be able to power only 14.5% of the number of homes that could be powered under the actual generating capacity rating. They give nuclear power an accredited capacity of 92%.
Curious, because supply margins of reliable power production are shrinking rapidly. No one will build a new generating station in the US unless its wind or solar. The regulatory obstacles to doing so are simply far too high.
The evidence for the tightening supply is that PJM’s auction prices for capacity have been steadily increasing for some years now.
The US is not unique. Supply margins are shrinking for most electric utilities around the world in advanced industrial nations.
There you have it…Bill Gates knows that nuclear is the best path to reducing the carbon footprint of his data centers…or more likely, his projected least cost way of assuring reliable electricity for his ventures. After all, politician controlled utilities seem to be spiralling down a path of controlled blackouts….
Gates isn’t the boss anymore.
Not in theory but I bet the whole company listens to what he says about their policies.
From the above article:
“The agreement would bring back Unit 1 at Three Mile Island, which was shuttered in 2019 for ‘economic reasons,’ according to Constellation’s statement.”
That has got to be the most laughable statement of the year!
How about “the agreement and several billion USD and a new approved EIS” would bring it back.
The nuclear reactors at Three Mile Island were designed in the early 1960s, and construction of Unit 1 began in May 1968. We’re looking at designs, materials and safety standards that were used more than 55 years ago!
I highly doubt any existing Unit 1 plant equipment, from the reactor itself to its associated plumbing to its control electrical wiring and electronics to its safety systems would pass review so as to be usable “as-is” while still meeting the latest codes governing nuclear power plants . . . well, maybe the cooling tower could still be used (hah!). Therefore, Constellation Energy is facing the massive cost of essentially rebuilding the entire power plant internal to the existing buildings. Ka-ching!
On top of that, a new environmental impact statement (EIS) will definitely be required due to changes in the surrounding communities and due to more rigorous standards for such statements that have taken place over the last 55 years. Ka-ching! . . . and that alone could be a show-stopper.
Finally, think of the flak that local politicians in Harrisburg/Londonderry Township, as well as politicians in Pennsylvania, will draw if they support a nuclear power plant reopening for the sole purpose of supplying electricity to Microsoft for their “artificial intelligence and cloud storage needs”.
Bottom line: IMHO, this planned “restarting” of Unit 1 has a one-in-a-million chance of actually happening.
From https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-20/microsoft-s-ai-power-needs-prompt-revival-of-three-mile-island-nuclear-plant :
“The owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania will invest $1.6 billion to revive it . . .
“Constellation Energy Corp., the biggest US operator of reactors, expects Three Mile Island to go back into service in 2028 . . . While one of the site’s two units permanently closed almost a half-century ago after the worst US nuclear accident, Constellation is planning to reopen the other reactor, which shut in 2019 because it couldn’t compete economically.”
(my bold emphasis added)
No additional comments needed from me.
Overregulation and lawsuits from crazy environmentalists have made nuclear ten times as costly as it should be.
Promise?
Sorry . . . I can’t do that. The number down votes I received on this particular comment clearly indicate that WUWT readers want to read additional comments from me.
Thanks for voting! 😉
I am quite sure Unit 1 was in full compliance with NRC regulations including all safety upgrades up until it was shut down in 2019. That makes it somewhat better than 50 year old technology.
No . . . being in compliance with a regulation does not change the age of technology the regulations govern.
There is no fountain of youth . . . especially one coming from bureaucrats.
Of course they were in full compliance with NRC regulations. It’s a mandatory condition of being allowed to operate.
Try not to respond to TYS. It’s an antinuclear troll who wants the world to degenerate into blackout.
Independent of being a troll or not, I don’t mind responding to your comments.
The last NRC regulations that Three Mile Island had to comply with regarding the plant producing electric output were in 2019, the year it’s last reactor ceased operation. Let’s see . . . yeah, those would be NRC regulations in effect some 5 years ago.
Again, being a troll or not, I am confident that NRC regulations for nuclear power plants have changed (becoming more demanding) in the last 5 years.
So you agree with what I said–they met the regulations 5 years ago, which were likely more stringent than 50 years ago. Thank you.
You are welcome, despite what IMHO is a weak attempt at misdirection.
You failed address my statement that NRC regulations today are almost certain to be more stringent than they were five years ago . . . primarily the result of ever-increasing knowledge and technology related to nuclear power plant construction, operations, monitoring equipment, safety systems and anti-terrorism measurers.
For example, https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part020/full-text.html summarizes NRC regulations under 10 CFR, Part 20 – STANDARDS FOR PROTECTION AGAINST RADIATION, Subparts A through O, (with the webpage last updated April 14, 2023) and identifies numerous updates to these regulations that occurred in 2020, 2021 and 2022, all within the last five years.
So you can make the excuses to those affected when their power goes out.
Um yeah, they didn’t study the issues at all before making the announcement.
Oh, Constellation Energy has probably studied all the issues in detail . . . it’s unlikely they are that stupid!
The above article from the Daily Caller News Foundation has all the appearance of a marketing trial balloon to gauge public reaction to the proposed project. It could also be a lead-in to an IPO offering, being so glowing with promise and absent revelation of all the warts as well as its obvious leveraging of climate alarmism.
Note, for instance, nowhere in the article is the initial cost projection of $1.6 BILLION mentioned. Where do you think that money is coming from if not mostly from the US taxpayers? And as anyone who has followed the history of nuclear power plant construction over the last 3 decades knows, that initial cost projection is almost certain to at least double by the time the hypothetical plant will start producing commercial electricity output.
Likewise, the article dares not mention any surveys or polls of populations in the plant’s surrounding Harrisburg/Londonderry Township areas that might reveal a serious NIMBY problem.
To put the TMI accident into perspective, although TMI-2 reactor was destroyed and some radioactive gas was released a couple of days after the accident, it was not enough to cause any dose above background levels to local residents. There were no injuries or adverse health effects from the Three Mile Island accident to anyone. Nuclear power is the cleanest, safest and most reliable method of electricity generation man has ever invented. Excessive fear of radiation exposure has strangled the development of nuclear energy in the U.S. to our detriment in terms of economic, health and and environmental impacts. No other source of energy is capable of providing the amounts of energy needed by an advanced modern society with fewer negative impacts than nuclear power.
Few people understand that radiation and radioactive elements are part of the natural environment. Natural background radiation exposure that everyone receives is far greater than the almost immeasurably small amount contributed by nuclear plant operations. On average airline long-haul flight crews receive more radiation exposure in a year than nuclear power workers.
“Nuclear power is the cleanest, safest and most reliable method of electricity generation man has ever invented.”
I would not want to live anywhere near the Sequoyah Fuel plant in Gore OK. 50,000 lbs of
radioactive waste on a 600 acre site. No thanks..
Wow! That’s 83.3 lbs per acre, what’s that four buckets full, awful waste of space.
16,700 tons (33. 4 million pounds) of radioactive by-products was left behind at the Sequoyah Fuels Corporation plant in total, the 50K was from the accident. The waste was moved the the White Mesa Mill in UT
So when are you digging up and trucking away your entire backyard? The typical backyard has 1-2 kg of uranium and 4 kg of thorium in the topsoil alone.
Really??? A quick google shows a much lower amount. Like
.3 PPM on the uranium and 1 millionth of a gram on the thorium.
Now compare that to the amount I cited of enriched uranium
above that had to be hauled away…
It’s incorrect to assert that Three Mile Island “caused radiation to flood areas surrounding nuclear power plants” like Fukushima and Chernobyl.
So a corporation can convince government to utilize nuclear power? I hope this restart and the delayed shut down of Diablo Canyon in California preview a shift in nuclear thinking.
This “restart” has yet happened, and very likely never will.
Ooops . . . This “restart” hasn’t yet happened.
If you are antinuclear, you are pro-blackout.
With that statement, one can only wonder:
— how the US survived prior to May 26, 1958, when the first US commercial nuclear power plant began operation, and
— how 162 separate countries exist today, each without any commercial nuclear power plant, including “first-world” countries such as Australia, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece and Ireland
. . . you know, with all those inevitable blackouts and such happening.
/sarc
So … Microsoft needs nuclear to power the AI that tells the rest of we need to get our power from Wind and Solar?
Does Microsoft say that? Where? Or are you confusing Microsoft with its long-age CEO Gates?
Gates is still the King of MS.
Not openly. But practically, yes.
But you have a point. There are others with AI that promote the same message.
How many of them keep their AIs “alive” with only wind and solar? Cut off from power other than wind and solar?
Why is 3-MIle Island “infamous”? Nothing significant happened outside the containment building. Mostly inside the unbreached pressure vessel.
When UNIT 2 partial melt-down occurred the containment systems worked as required. Chernobyl, the only meltdown with major radiation leaks, did not have any containment – so cannot be compared with a commercial reactor built to appropriate standards of a responsible government. And doses for evacuation were set at 6mSv pa, more than 100 times less than natural levels elsewhere in the world – although the local effect were bad because no iodine pills were issued and people were not warned not to drink local milk, so a lot of I-131 was igested, although the long term effects of this for the 6,000 cases where estimated at 50 deaths long term. Added to the 30 first responders that’s 50 deaths altogether. See UNSCEAR report on Chernobyl.
The containment worked at 3-MIle Island so there was no significant radiation release, even the meltdown was partial (the exposed top section?) and the core remained within the pressure vessel, where it could quietly decay to zero, if left.
The only radiation leaks were gases that can pass through particulate HEPA filters, but these had short half lives and carried no significant radiation risk. See link. The authorities actually cleaned it up over 10 years and transferred the fuel into storage designed for high level waste. So they could also have safely replaced the nuclear boiler with another.
“Readings were far below health limits” .
And those limits are far too low for political reasons, they make nuclear power much more expensive that it need be to feed an army of jobsworth bureaucrats, many of whom don’t understand the science behind what they measure, the radiation or the health physics. They are just tech Policeman, with meters, rules, hazmat suits, power and no idea.
The radiation protection racket justifies large government budgets and provides safe bureaucratic jobs managing a mostly non-problem with few real risks. So that safe seat bureaucracy won’t acknowledge the science developed after safe levels were decided on a guess – that has been proved wildly wrong at low dose levels. These were guessed by extrapolating atom bomb radiation effects by eight factors of ten downwards. Hardly an error free guess when animals, then people, evolved in higher radiation levels than now, and we now know from better science that Nature doesn’t work as they guessed, also see Climate models, but they have jobs to keep. And people are ignorant AND irrational and been made scared by the media, so the pencil necks jobs are safe. For now. The Health Physicists, who do know the facts, point out the problem, but the protection racket officials don’t want to know, or to save the public money by declaring the safe levels to be significantly higher, when they have well paid phoney baloney government jobs to protect by enforcing the hard to meet lower levels, with bogus rules.
FACT: LTN is completely wrong at low levels below 1Sievert pa. 1,000mSv pa. Safe level is set at 2mSv pa.
We now know exposure at up to 400/FOUR HUNDRED times the supposed safe level occurs naturally around the world, highest on resort beaches of Brazil, with no epidemiological evidence of consequential cancers/illness.
The other “infamous” unit 3MI 1 kept working safely for 40 years feeding the grid 24/7. Reasons given for 2019 closure were the money, which makes little sense unless an upgrade or major shutdown was due. Marginal cost of power from a nuclear reactor is very low as the fuel cost is a very small. Main cost is CAPEX. Shutdowns for tests and replacements to grant safe life extension may have been due. That can be pricey. But Microsoft can fund that from the lifetime savings on the cheapest energy that it can get over the extended life, if it’s a private deal outside of all the government energy taxes and subsidy rackets imposed on nuclear power distributed on the grid, to make other modalities look better.
The £MI name problem is probably fixed most cheaply as they already have, using the Windscale approach.
Change the name and carry on. Enough for the three second memory politicians of minimal factual processing power to forgetaboutit. Soprano style.
The real problem with nuclear is not the realities of the safety management, which rational and educated engineers have learnt how to do in Gen3. It is the abysmally ignorant and too stupid to learn Arts graduate media parroting the ignorant and stupid self serving liars who hold elected office in America, who are not interested in the technical realities they are also not educated to understand, and most prefer too arrogant to try.
They don’t grasp the basic physics necessary to test the key decisions that any energy dependent developed economy in a competitive World must get right to continue to stay developed, so are wholly inadequate to make those decisions. Story Tip?
Valued Information.. Thanks.
I didn’t know about Brazil but if you live in Colorado you will receive a dose from the granite that exceeds the ridiculous “safe” level.
Typo: On your first FACT you typed “LTN” but clearly meant LNT. The Linear No-Threshold approach is utterly unscientific. Jack De Vanney (on his Gordian Knot Substack blog) has proposed a more realistic model that he calls SNT — Sigmoid No Threshold:
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/snt-for-dummies
This is not correct. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_Nuclear_Generating_Station , which in turn references “Three Mile Island radiation leak investigated”, CNN, November 22, 2009:
“On November 21, 2009, a release of radioactivity occurred inside the containment building of TMI-1 while workers were cutting pipes . . . Approximately 20 employees were treated for mild radiation exposure . . . On January 24, 2010, TMI-1 was brought back online.”
That is a downtime of two months due to that accident.
Reading the announcement details, the Microsoft data center will be obtaining its power through a connection to the local power grid, not through a direct connection to the TMI power plant itself.
Which means that TMI’s power will be available to other electricity consumers attached to the PJM regional grid if the need arises.
Microsoft and all the other big names in AI have all said unequivocally they expect the power utilities to take on all the financial and business risk of building the new generation capacity needed to support AI requirements.
These AI firms will sign power purchase agreements with the power utilities. But that is as far as they will go. These firms will not build new power plants themselves, nor they will they take the risk of directly financing part or all of a new power plant being constructed by a power utility.
Which means that Constellation and possibly PJM’s current ratepayers will effectively be covering the expense of bringing TMI back on line in the hope that the need for TMI’s power actually materializes.
OK, so the grid generates the reliable power, and Microsoft enters a supply agreement with the grid to take the reliable power. All of it. By my maths that means that humans don’t get the reliable power.
That’s about the size of it. By my reckoning, AI is driving the Energy Day of Reckoning (EDoR) closer and faster than anyone anticipated even two years ago. One major implication is that we cannot afford to shut down even one more legacy power generation plant be it coal-fired, gas-fired, or nuclear.
“By my reckoning, AI is driving the Energy Day of Reckoning (EDoR) closer and faster than anyone anticipated even two years ago.”
All so we can get hallucinatory information from non-intelligent “AI”. Wonderful.
Your thought process is probably right, but if the grid crashes, MS will be just as blacked out as everybody else. I have no idea where the AI data center will be, but it is unlikely to get a direct feed from the plant–the indication is that the power will be fed into the grid like any other power.
Just what the doctor ordered – global tech companies controlling our national electric grid. That will turn out well. Sigh…
When big monopolies ran the electric system and were allowed a fixed profit determined by regulatory authorities….we had enough power and low prices too….now that politicians attempt to run it all “greenly”, it’s not looking so good now. We got deregulated cuz politicians fear mongered that the monopolies were over-profiting…my actual electricity is amongst the least costly per kwH in the country…but transmission fees, demand fees, and riders with obvious nonsense names invented by rent-seekers make up 3/4 of my bill….doesn’t seem possible for it all to be legit…
Quite right. The vertically integrated electric utility model worked very well, as long as the state politicians would leave it alone. But a lot of not-so-bright boys thought they could engineer a better corporate model. What they produced was Enron.
More good news.
Indirectly or perhaps directly Microsoft knows that with these energy hungry data centers and now supposedly AI, wind and solar will not cut it. Their business model in these areas require reliable energy not weather dependent unreliable, intermittent “green energy.”