Microsoft to Acquire Three Mile Island to power its AI development

For those of you who weren’t around in 1979 – or were but have forgotten – Three Mile Island was a Nuclear Power Plant located in the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, PA. In March of 1979, one of the island’s two reactors suffered a partial meltdown due to human error and flawed design elements. The United States Nuclear Regulation Commission (US.NRC) describes it as…

“the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power

plant operating history, although its small radioactive

releases had no detectable health effects on plant workers

or the public. Its aftermath brought about sweeping changes

involving emergency response planning, reactor operator

training, human factors engineering, radiation protection,

and many other areas of nuclear power plant operations.

It also caused the NRC to tighten and heighten its regulatory

oversight. All of these changes significantly enhanced U.S.

reactor safety.”

For anti-nuke advocates, the meltdown vividly illustrated the inherent dangers of splitting the atom for domestic use. The China Syndrome, a film starring Michael Douglas, Jane Fonda, and Jack Lemmon, a fictional account of a nuclear plant meltdown, was released twelve days before the disaster, highlighting issues surrounding nuclear plants (and a boffo box office success into the bargain).

The dire effects of nuclear accidents are long-lasting. Natalie Zaransky, author of Radiation Nation: Three Mile Island and the Political Transformation of the 1970s, has noted:

“In 2017, the Penn State Medical Center released a study that found a link between the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island and thyroid cancer, a reminder that many questions about what happened there remain unanswered to this day.”

Three Mile Island was shut down in 2019. However, thanks to the huge energy demands of the AI industry, Constellation Energy Corporation wants to fire up the remaining reactor. According to Christian Britschghi on Reason’s website, “Microsoft has agreed to purchase 100 percent of the plant’s output for the next 20 years.”  Constellation’s willing to spend 1.6 billion dollars to get the reactor back in action. If the deal is approved, that should occur by 2028.

Fast Company’s Adele Peters points out nuclear power doesn’t contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, then gets to the heart of the matter. “But given the obvious risks – and the fact that there’s still no good way to deal with nuclear waste from spent fuel – does a focus on nuclear power really make sense?”

Peters informs us that the demand for electricity keeps growing. The shift from fossil fuels to sustainable sources of energy is admirable, but it might lead to dangerous behavior:

“The industry is trying to create the pressure on the regulator

to really cut back on even the most fundamental safety issues

or considerations,” says Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear

power safety at the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists.

“That dynamic could lead to mistakes that could be really

costly in terms of increasing risk.” 

To another Three Mile Island episode, in other words.

Nature’s Mike Greshko details the work necessary to re-open Three Mile Island and other nuclear plants that have been shuttered over the years:

“Because the plants were slated for shutdown and safety

checks were therefore stopped, regulators and companies

must now navigate a complex licensing, oversight and

environmental-assessment process to reverse the plants’

decommissioning. Safety checks will be needed to ensure,

among other things, that the plants can operate securely once

uranium fuel rods have been replaced in their reactors. When

these plants were decommissioned, their radioactive fuel was

removed and stored, so the facilities no longer needed to

adhere to many exacting technical specifications, says

Jamie Pelton, also a co-chair of the Palisades restart panel,

and a deputy director at the NRC’s Office of Nuclear

Reactor Regulation in Rockville, Maryland.”

When the first Atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, the world realized that Pandora’s box had been opened. Balancing the need for safety with the insatiable demand for sustainable energy is the goal. Greed has a way of winning out over responsible behavior, however, and if you think all this is a recipe for disaster…you may be right.