Inside the $1.6B Plan to Restart Three Mile Island | WSJ



The lights are turning back on at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, the site of America’s worst nuclear meltdown, after it has lain dormant for 5 years. The clean energy will be used to power AI servers and the electricity it generates will be sold to one company: Microsoft. Reviving nuclear power plants has drawn support from Silicon Valley executives like Elon Musk, but what does it take to actually restart one of these plants?

WSJ went inside the nuclear plant to learn the steps it takes to restart the clean energy source and examined the regulations in place in order to restart these reactors.

Chapters:
0:00 Demand for nuclear power
1:07 The steps to restart
4:11 The 1979 meltdown and cleanup
4:52 The regulations to restart

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43 thoughts on “Inside the $1.6B Plan to Restart Three Mile Island | WSJ”

  1. I'm all for nuclear energy and the disaster at TMI was part of a paper I wrote on the public perception of nuclear fallout; however, Microsoft's interest in TMI solely as a means to power AI technologies is disappointing…

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  2. I can only imaging how hard it is to start up a nuclear reactor with new hires and only degrees and no actual on hands experience running a reactor. I would hope they would offer the old operators some sort of deal to come out of retirement and help start the plant back up and keep it running for a year to train the new people.

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  3. This is blatant misinformation. I had to stop when the Wall Street Journal reported that "TMI 2 melted down." Nothing else in this report can be credible. It is a matter of history that there was a coolant leak in Unit 2, there was no meltdown, and no release of radiation. Are there any editorial standards anymore? When will a retraction and correction be issued?

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  4. @13:03 I agree with you, but what I really wonder is if Trump is ever going to look back and try to push the DOJ to squander in bs after he takes office! I believe just as he dismissed Hilary, will he dismiss that entire circle surrounding the Bidden name (going to make a bid to pay for your name and false hopes!? I say Trump will let it slide and focus on recovering ❤️‍🩹 the USA!!!

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  5. Funny. This was all bad until Microsoft got involved. We were brainwashed to believe Nuclear was bad so we could go with wind and solar, but Bill Gates comes along and we toss out the rules and say, let’s eat bugs.

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  6. If the water pump failed and mind you is such a vital piece of equipment why didn’t they install another condenser water pump with a automatic bypass valve and none of this would have ever happened

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  7. Oh boy! Can't wait for the bean counters to start saying, "Naw that's too expensive, we don't know what those safety experts do so we don't need them." Those that forget the past are condemned to relive it.

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  8. If anything we should be building more sites. Just like aviation has become so safe from learning about accidents and creating new rules and procedures the same can be said of nuclear energy.

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  9. The farce is that data centers are not carbon neutral. All of the energy efficiency improvements consumers have made over 60 years are being eaten up by huge data centers to fuel crypto, AI, cloud operations, etc.

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  10. I was an 8th grader in the Harrisburg PA area when that accident happened. Lived about 10 miles from the plant, got out of school early (had no idea why). Nothing resulted from the radioactive steam leak (maybe my sanity has been affected, but…. ). I was wondering if/when someone would start using that site again. They tore down two other cooling towers decades ago.

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  11. And of course Microsoft will be held accountable for any screwups as well as the decommissioning and waste management of the plant, right? Right?
    Not a single terminal storage facility, let alone a fast neutron plant operational on the entire continent. But let's restart the disaster reactor because the Small modular reactor bubble is already over and there is a way to theoretically blame it all on user error.
    Nice.

    Wishing the technicians there good luck, they will need it.

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  12. The primary discipline on reactivating the TMI reactor with diligence, throughness and safety in mind is the financial damage to the company that will inevitably occur if a nuclear accident happens. The stock market will drive the value of the company into the ground due to the legal risks. Constellation Energy runs a fleet of nuclear reactors so has expertise in the technology and operations. No company wants to destroy a productive asset. That's a lot of motivation to do the job right.

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  13. This article, although good news it has many things not 100% accurate. The 3MI reactor only experienced a partial-meltdown, not a full meltdown like Chernobyl. The narrator also states the consumer will pull equal amount from the grid, actually they will pull what they need at anytime during the day and the load will vary. The plant as any other nuclear plant will be a base load unit which means they are either at full load or offline, no in-between except during startups and shutdowns. People also think that because a customer wants a specific type of generation for their facility that the power company will give them just that. They will put what type they request on the grid but it cannot be directed to their facility.
    So yeah, there are a few more but I will leave it at that. And yes, I have been in the power industry for over 30 years.

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