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RE: AI-driven nuclear renaissance? Microsoft makes a deal to reopen Three Mile Island
It's funny how all the articles related to this story stress how it was the site of the worst U.S. nuclear disaster. It gives the impression that the site has been closed since then but in fact it just closed a few years ago for economic reasons, not safety issues.
True, but I think it's understandable. The accident is what gives the site its historical significance. Especially to the portion of country who is old enough to remember when it happened.
We have many other nuclear power plants that no one can even name, like Palisades or Nautilus, in this article, or another example is Limerick. I grew up so close to the Limerick nuclear power plant that I could hear them testing the emergency sirens monthly on Mondays at 10am. I think it would be far less noteworthy if Limerick were to shutdown or to reopen. I doubt if I'd bother to write an article about it😉.
It would be interesting to know how many nuclear power plants have closed and then reopened. Doesn't seem like that would be a very common occurrence. I imagine it is pretty expensive to get a nuclear powerplant refurbished and back up and running. They aren't particularly economical to begin with so Microsoft must think this AI stuff is going to be a really big deal :)
According to this video (around 50 seconds), it hasn't happened before in the US. So, I guess Palisades would probably be the first in 2025, and TMI would be the second in 2028. Though I'm not sure about the rest of the world, and there might be some others coming online in the US that I'm not aware of.