Re-starting Three Mile Island reactor to power data centers?

Anonymous
Seems like a horrible idea to me.

TMI has been shut down for decades. The people with the expertise to run it are all retired or dead now. Decades of prior use have degraded the reactor casing with neutron induced fragility. And it’s an older, less safe reactor design to begin with. All these risk factors just for data centers? Is AI really that important? How did we manage to survive until now without it then?

It seems like a really really bad idea. I cannot believe they are seriously considering it.

What do we have an NRC for?
Anonymous
Agree. And putting A.I. in charge of it, pure lunacy.
That's how you get intentional meltdowns when A.I. decides to exterminate humans SkyNet style.
Anonymous
OP, what is you educational and professional background?
Anonymous
*your*
Anonymous
OP it closed 5 years ago, not "decades"
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:OP it closed 5 years ago, not "decades"


Yeah OP's getting confused. There were two reactor units at Three Mile Island, the one that was involved in thr 1979 incident had its core removed but the other one was simply shut down in 2019 and not decommissioned. They're merely reactivating the one shut down in 2019.

It's also not like the facility is abandoned, they don't just walk.away and leave these things, they still maintain them until they are fully decommissioned.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:Agree. And putting A.I. in charge of it, pure lunacy.
That's how you get intentional meltdowns when A.I. decides to exterminate humans SkyNet style.


Um... no? The plan is Microsoft will purchase the power generated by the plant to run their AI systems. No one's saying AI is going to run the plant.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:OP it closed 5 years ago, not "decades"


Yeah OP's getting confused. There were two reactor units at Three Mile Island, the one that was involved in thr 1979 incident had its core removed but the other one was simply shut down in 2019 and not decommissioned. They're merely reactivating the one shut down in 2019.

It's also not like the facility is abandoned, they don't just walk.away and leave these things, they still maintain them until they are fully decommissioned.


Reading this thread, I get the impression that Harrisburg is a Potemkin village.
Anonymous
In addition to what has already been said to correct OP’s gross misconceptions, I’ll simply offer the that there is no realistic way to reduce carbon emissions in our country without a major expansion of nuclear power generation. If you actually care about climate change, there’s no other choice.

I’m a nuclear engineer, and I will try to answer what questions you may have.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:In addition to what has already been said to correct OP’s gross misconceptions, I’ll simply offer the that there is no realistic way to reduce carbon emissions in our country without a major expansion of nuclear power generation. If you actually care about climate change, there’s no other choice.

I’m a nuclear engineer, and I will try to answer what questions you may have.


This just isn’t true but not surprised it is a nuclear engineer saying so.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:In addition to what has already been said to correct OP’s gross misconceptions, I’ll simply offer the that there is no realistic way to reduce carbon emissions in our country without a major expansion of nuclear power generation. If you actually care about climate change, there’s no other choice.

I’m a nuclear engineer, and I will try to answer what questions you may have.




This just isn’t true but not surprised it is a nuclear engineer saying so.


I expected that. I make a decent income as a nuclear engineer, I make about $160,000. the truth is I like my work, but I am not wed to it. There are a lot of other things I would like to try as a third career. if my industry were to disappear overnight, I would be very happy going in an entirely different direction, even for a lot less money. I would actually like to try teaching.

What I’m trying to say is that I have some degree of familiarity and experience and knowledge with this issue, but I’m not personally as biased as you would assume. And, furthermore, my investment earnings outpace my job earnings.

What I am saying on this topic is that nuclear energy generation is the only realistic and affordable option that the world has at the moment for a large scale, carbon free power generation. Solar and wind only look competitive when you ignore the fact that they are not able to scale up to cover a significant part of the demand without massive energy storage capabilities to smooth their production curves. That means almost unfathomable levels of battery or some other type of storage, which would significantly increase the overall costs to deliver that power to the grid 24 hours a day. That’s why, in a nutshell they are not realistic.

It’s also why, despite the massive subsidies and incentives that they are receiving, the US continues to extract and burn more fossil fuels every single year. Not only are we not solving the problem, we aren’t even slowing it down. We are extracting and burning more carbon than ever before in human history and it continues to rise.

Anonymous
I don’t know why you think utility scale batteries are unfathomable. They represent a significant amount of generating capacity added to the grid in 2023.

And the reasons we continue to increase extraction of fossil fuels have nothing to do with levels of renewable energy on the grid it’s because there is no political will to stop doing it. So instead we have started exporting— 10 millions bpd last year. We are basically at Saudi Arabia’s level of oil exports.
Anonymous
The suggestion that nuclear is cheaper than solar/wind plus battery storage is ridiculous— and that doesn’t even count all the subsidies nuclear gets from liability limits under Price Anderson, waste management, DOE etc.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:I don’t know why you think utility scale batteries are unfathomable. They represent a significant amount of generating capacity added to the grid in 2023.

And the reasons we continue to increase extraction of fossil fuels have nothing to do with levels of renewable energy on the grid it’s because there is no political will to stop doing it. So instead we have started exporting— 10 millions bpd last year. We are basically at Saudi Arabia’s level of oil exports.


Here’s some more evidence that utility-scale batteries are not “unfathomable” but are actually being currently used—


https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=63025
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:The suggestion that nuclear is cheaper than solar/wind plus battery storage is ridiculous— and that doesn’t even count all the subsidies nuclear gets from liability limits under Price Anderson, waste management, DOE etc.


Not a nuclear engineer, but we have existing nuclear power plants. You don't need to find space and build out the infrastructure to reach your new wind or solar farm. You can run the nuclear plants while we build out the new infrastructure instead of burning fossil fuels.

Waste disposal is a problem that was never solved as far as I know. As I understand it, the spent material sits onsite in cooling ponds. There's no long term storage because people.
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