Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant to Restart Under Agreement with Microsoftwww.cnbc.com/2024/09/20/constellation-energy-to-restart-three-mile-island-and-sell-the-power-to-microsoft.html
348 sats \ 6 comments \ @Cje95 20 Sep Construction_and_Engineering
Fantastic to see another nuclear plant to be brought online! Since Constellation Energy is willing to spend $1.6 billion to restart it I wonder how much Microsoft is paying them under this plan cause obviously its gotta cover not only the $1.6 billion but give them the ability to make some $$$
Amazon seems to have really kick started something here and I expect to see these large tech companies continue to pay to bring these power plants back online since they are 100% clean once constructed!
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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @Malachi17 20 Sep
This is not good news. The thing melted down before, and this time it is being brought back online so it can supply power to AI for Microsoft? I mean, how dumb do you have to be to understand that none of those things are representative of progress that hasn't ended well or are predicted to end quite badly?
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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @Cje95 OP 20 Sep
That reactor isn’t being brought online. This is just reactor one, reactor two is the one that melted down. Reactor one ran until 2019 without any issues and was shut down because natural gas was just so cheap it squeezed it out. The process to get it operational again is going to take years along with repermitting both on the state and federal level and it is critical we use carbon free energy that is just sitting there.
If Three Mile Island was so terrible reactor one wouldn’t have continued operations for another 40 years like it did. It also faced extreme scrutiny and passed with flying colors and was consistently updated over the years. It isn’t some time bomb like you make it sound it is a sound power generation source that arguably has resulted in fewer deaths than any other source out there.
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @Malachi17 20 Sep
The process to get it operational again is going to take years along with repermitting both on the state and federal level and it is critical we use carbon free energy that is just sitting there.
If it didn't have any issues in 2019, then getting it operational should only be a matter of permits.
If Three Mile Island was so terrible reactor one wouldn’t have continued operations for another 40 years like it did.
I remember that pickup trucks used to have gasoline tanks directly behind the driver's seat. Most of those trucks discovered that if a wreck of a certain kind hit, the gas tank would explode. Despite this, there are still some trucks on the road today from those years, which are from the 40's 50's and 60's that still have the gas tank behind the driver's seat. Applying the logic here, they have been on the road for 70+ years and so the design must not be terrible, right?
It isn’t some time bomb like you make it sound it is a sound power generation source that arguably has resulted in fewer deaths than any other source out there.
Things always result in fewer deaths until they one day don't. There are usually plenty of warning signs that are ignored along the way.
edit: relevant historical echo: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2010/04/gm-ck-exploding-pickup/
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Cje95 OP 20 Sep
Mother Jones’s is an awful site to source 😂 even the Democrats don’t use it because of how poor their reporting is so I’m not even going to waste time reading it.
Those trucks though are still made to this day by all the major manufacturers so uhhh yeah a single cab with a gas tank behind the driver in the bed is common for maintenance and worksite I see them around The Hill all the time.
It’s obvious you are one of those who hates solar however we don’t get to net zero without it unless you are cool with natural gas. We don’t have the battery tech and we don’t have fusion figured out to maintain a baseload power supply. That’s what nuclear does and that’s why you see both sides in these divisive times come together for this. It works, everything is outfitted now with a stupid number of redundancy’s and the US at least factors in all possible types of natural disasters in an area.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Malachi17 20 Sep
Mother Jones’s is an awful site to source 😂 even the Democrats don’t use it because of how poor their reporting is so I’m not even going to waste time reading it.
In my life, I have seen many sources go up and down in quality and content. I find it wise to generally not dismiss anything out of hand without first understanding where it is coming from.
Those trucks though are still made to this day by all the major manufacturers so uhhh yeah a single cab with a gas tank behind the driver in the bed is common for maintenance and worksite I see them around The Hill all the time.
Well then, with the exploding pagers and phones, what is there to possibly worry about?
It’s obvious you are one of those who hates solar however we don’t get to net zero without it unless you are cool with natural gas. We don’t have the battery tech and we don’t have fusion figured out to maintain a baseload power supply. That’s what nuclear does and that’s why you see both sides in these divisive times come together for this. It works, everything is outfitted now with a stupid number of redundancy’s and the US at least factors in all possible types of natural disasters in an area.
I don't hate solar, but I think it is an inefficient kind of energy. I think there is more figured out and has been for some time concerning power and energy, (The original Tesla comes to mind, among others) but the problem present concerns a kind of energy mafia that wants to make sure people need to keep paying enough to make the kinds of people who work in that sector rich.
Nuclear works but it is also a liability. The waste is one problem. Hackers and terrorists and foreign nations are another.
Let's skip the bull poopy though and go straight to the problem itself. Let's imagine, just for the sake of fun, that energy via cold fusion is discovered. (It probably all ready has been) How do you make money off of that, especially if it is safe enough such that everyone can have their own source of energy? People are going to need a whole lot less oil and gasoline, because probably someone can run an engine from it. Combine the discovery of that with longitudinal type of waves in terms of energy delivery, and you don't require all the infrastructure either.
To be sure, we are imagining a lot here, but the possibility of the exercise is to demonstrate how quickly such a discovery might begin a path that causes many people who have jobs in energy to suddenly not have those jobs. That is the real enemy here. The nuclear plants are just a red-herring that keeps the same convo going.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Cje95 OP 20 Sep
SMR's are what the US and China/Russia are moving towards till Fusion is viable which we could see starting at the end of this year/beginning of next. Helion is set to finish prototype number 7 Polaris which is supposed to generate the first electrons and Helion has contracts that start in 2028.
Even with cold fusion say we find it tomorrow or in 5 hours several factors remain including a supply chain for whatever is required, scalability issues of replicating and even shrinking down the size of the facility... it would take a decade plus to pull off something like that and that's ignoring any government regulations or just cutting edge technology issues they run into
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