Microsoft cash to help reignite Three Mile Island atomic plant The idle Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear power plant may soon be coming back online in Pennsylvania, thanks to a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) between Microsoft and Constellation Energy, which owns the shuttered facility. TMI Unit 1, which was retired for economic reasons in 2019, is slated for a potential revival as …
Yeah, as Brandon noted (linked under "partial meltdown"), TMI-2 was the site of a major accident and decommissioned in 1979. Here though, they are looking to use TMI-1 that has operated at 800+ MW from 1974 to 2019 (nice photos of TMI-1 and TMI-2 here) without noticeable China Syndrome ... (yet?)
Still, disaster movies can be great fun IMHO, and one involving AI, a nuclear reactor, a tsunami, and drunken Russians (Ukrainians really), taking place in the vicinity of Washington DC, upstream of the Chesapeake Bay, on the Susquehanna River, could indeed be quite the box office ticket (as long as it remains fiction and not a documentary)!
The involvement of M$ will be the cherry on top for that disaster movie. For bonus points, get Jerry Bruckheimer to produce and Michael Bay to direct. It'll be a winner I tells ya. What could possibly go wrong?
BTW. it's clear Americans do get irony after all. M$ and a nuclear power station disaster are made for each other.
Katrinab- "surely way past its operating design life?"
Before being closed in 2019 it was re-licenced for use until the 2030s. Other reactors are getting further extensions.
Nuclear plants are built and maintained to such high tolerances they last for a very, very long time. If it's brought back up to spec there's no reason to think this last 20-year extension would be its last one.
It's one of the things that causes problems for things like LCoE calculations- there's a 20-year period where they're expensive, but there are reactors that'll have gone on for three times that AFTER they've paid themselves off. So which number do you pick?
Forget all the nuclear safety questions, I'll be the water bucket here: let's talk about the practical.
Note the indistinct description at the beginning of the article that TMI-1 was shut down in 2019 due to "economic reasons". The real truth is later in the article:
"The facility was shut down after it failed to get a needed subsidy renewed that the company said was key to competing with cheaper fossil fuels"
Do the research: the "economic" reasons was that the state of Pennsylvania discontinued the financial subsidies that Constellation Energy was receiving to keep the plant operating. Yes, you read that right: the 'cheap and cheerful' nuclear power of TMI-1 was losing money because operating costs were higher to run the nuclear plant than to make electricity using natural gas-fired turbines.
The only reason TMI-1 lasted on the grid as long as it did was that it was being PAID to do so! Paid out of taxpayer pockets, to keep the plant running by a company...making money selling the electricity.
Only in America.
So, when Constellation lost the subsidy, when the state says "Forget it, no more, do it yourself", Constellation shut it all down. Nuclear power couldn't keep itself afloat in today's economy once all of the maintenance and overhead costs were factored in.
The irony.
"The only reason TMI-1 lasted on the grid as long as it did was that it was being PAID to do so! Paid out of taxpayer pockets, to keep the plant running by a company...making money selling the electricity.
Only in America."
Seriously? You need to get out more. That shit happens pretty much everywhere.
I've been following the recommissioning/restart of the Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan on the Lake Michigan shoreline. I thought El Reg had covered that, but I cannot find the article. It has had plenty of opposition, both from locals (some who moved nearby on the promise the plant was over and done) and at least one former plant engineer. The state, with federal grants in hand, insists it's necessary to meet carbon/green goals, and I don't disagree. On one hand, it's not my backyard; on the other hand, the Great Lakes are everyone's problem, and I don't want cancer when I visit Mackinac Island, "downstream" of the plant. (I also live close to downstream waters, just a LOT further downstream.)
I guess so, although it's not very dangerous. The 'safe limits' are hilariously low. Coal power station fly ash is way more radioactive than anything nuke stations are allowed to release. Nuclear power, done PROPERLY is one of the greenest forms of energy. And commercial pilots aren't overly bothered by radiation :)
> A nuclear power plant connected to the internet?
A nuclear power plant connected to the Internet running secure Microsoft product.
Disney corp was the first when they brow-beat Florida legislators into granting them the option to go nuclear.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-15/disney-world-s-literal-nuclear-option-explained
Part of the restart upgrades would be updating the control systems. Just think -- Three Mile Island and Windows 11.
Suggesting that meeting climate goals might be better served by "using less electricity" obviously is a non-starter. According to what I read this morning data centers are already using about 4% of the US's electricity supply; all that energy ends up as heat which goes where, exactly?
So Microsoft requires a rehabbed nuclear plant...to run AI.
A dedicated nuclear power facility.
To perform crucial tasks like artificial customer support, on-demand artificial "art", selfie-polishing, white-paper and sales-pitch writing, Excel spreadsheet refinement, and inaccurate next-word suggestion in Word. Probably also security - er, "security" in Defender, et al.
A nuclear facility.
They can't not wreck their own products and services with every update, but they're buying a nuclear reactor.
I look forward to the dull blue-green glow of hubris as the windshield melts and our tears evaporate, leaving only charcoal to defend.
I think MS will buy the output to TMI Unit #1 for X amount of years.
I think what everyone needs to know is this is not happening overnight nor is it happening in one or two years. As the article states, "Unit 1 will need "significant investments" to restore the plant, with work needed on the turbine, generator, main power transformer, and cooling and control systems. "
Who's pocket is this "significant investment" coming from? I can almost guarantee it will not be MS but the US tax payers. Next, if-and-when the funding has been made, it will take several years to refurbish the plant before the Unit #1 starts turning.
Cynical me believes this is all just a PR stunt and a tax break.
I doubt very, VERY much the TMI 1 operators needed a penny in subsidies to operate. What they in all likelihood did was plead poverty to whoever owned the piggybank and laid all sorts of bovine excrement to suck the public teat dry. Just like Intel, LG, Honda, GM, Ford, et cetera have done.
So on the basis that some profit is better than no profit, it seems more likely than not thay they did 'need' some level of subsidy/tax break.
Most likely the same level of subsidy/tax breaks that the coal and oil plants got would have been more than sufficient, given that this deal is apparently sufficient to do the necessary work to refurbish and reopen.
This is quite serious stuff and we are not seeing DevOps fiddling with a nuclear power plant as some commentards imply.
Nuclear engineering requires nuclear engineers. They do not program anything with Powershell and other frippary. Constellation Energy are the contractors and MS is just a customer.
>>Nuclear engineering requires nuclear engineers. They do not program anything with Powershell and other frippary.
have you tried calling their Support line. letting them know? I dont think they do really and are just wondering what version of Surface to name it.
"Nuclear engineering requires nuclear engineers. They do not program anything with Powershell and other frippary. Constellation Energy are the contractors and MS is just a customer."
I remember an old computer magazine, 80'Micro, or possibly Byte ran a series on building a "control desk" with buttons and blnken lights to "control" a nuclear reactor. My head says it was 80'Micro as I#m sure it was for a TRS-80 model I or III, all programmed in BASIC :-)
How?
By generating carefully crafted predictive text based on all the other greenwashing bullshit it can find?
There is no artificial intelligence outside the self-blinded eyes of the AI evangelists. What we have appears to spew out the regurgitated pap it finds on the internet and nothing more.
The way to reduce make AI use less power is to stop pretending it has a use and turn the damn things off, not to glue them onto every project in the hopes it will give venture capitalists wet dreams.
Even if it did 'solve' energy generation, somebody still needs to build the power plants.
Does Gates really think anyone would fund and construct a single multi-billion plant purely on AI's instructions?
There is exactly zero probability of that happening within his lifetime. Even if he gets himself frozen.
There is no artificial intelligence outside "
but it is abroad. Witching.
There is intelligence is almost all we do and have done, apart from the French who got lucky sometimes.
Your light switch has intelligence as does your alarm COCK. It is just a question of the level. Light swith is usually level 1. Siri level 2, ChatGTP level 3, SI & LNN level 4. Level 5 is not there as sometihng something happens whic i could never predict with good prob rates. [EDIT: blurred lines between observer and compution, prob, where non-organic intelligence is entagled with human processing (given the brain is a super efficent monster of a machibne). hth]
The only way current "AI" could solve the energy problem is if it crafted videos and text so persuasive we all stop using energy. Actually a simpler way would be to persuade us all to kill ourselves. That seems unlikely, given the quality of output from "AI" so far. Maybe Bill thinks General Actual AI is just around the corner, in which case he has truly drunk the Kool-Aid. Given what it takes to create unreliable-super-auto-correct we'd need data centres the size of planets. Not to mention the slight wrinkle that after more than 50 years of intensive research, we don't know how to make intelligence. It must be 5 years away now (a Musk 5 years).
well, if you dont mind it would help but really those with iq < 100 is the target. Natural wastage is fairest
>> Bill thinks General Actual AI is just around the corner
He does, the peadalow does. Good. It is not only the Devil who can play tricks, Bill.
GAI is is red-herring. and it isnt as u say anywhere near. Most AI systems are full of static prompt cards. LOL
Those evil men and women want AGI. they want the power. always power for them. no control our themselves. whores to coin.
Might help to think of it not as actual intelligence because that is like saying 'acutal maths' - which has many areas. Instead the real focus is the hurdles of quantum-like notworks. Big Bill doesnt want those. they only use a big lump to be birthed and then very little.
I could see a future where we saved for the pwoer costs of birth our SI. Then it runs itself on solar/batteries/powercable
I'm surprised that they never copied the British trick of renaming nuclear power facilities in the aftermath of headline grabbing melty / explodey incidents. If they'd changed its name to "Rainbowville", nobody would now be batting an eyelid.
Not a fan of Microsoft, but a PPA does not mean they control the plant, just that they purchase the power. It has positive side-effects in that the plants would send extra load into the net, unless M$ manages to somehow continuously use all generated output. This does not justify the excessive power need in the first place, but nuances assumptions others in this thread seem to take.
If you want to deter such excessive power usage, levy a tax on Watts/Flops. But it's the US, so no.
And aside the whole AI aspect, it's not like non-AI microsoft compute is meaningfully improving the world either. Most compute is entirely wasted, where mildly faster hardware is most of the time enabling more bloated software. This deal is just a sore highlighting a worsening trend.
The latest benchmarks confirm empirically that even when optimized for it, Windows 11 is 10-15% [1] slower than free Linux distros (if you compare to Clear Linux, the difference widens even more). So if you want to act to deter this kind of behavior, switch off all M$. But minor discomforts and slowly boiling frogs, so also no.
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-meteorlake-windows-linux
OK, but it's worth noting that none of the kaboom potential would be reactivated (without, as far as I can tell, much in the way of change from the original operational design that produced the earlier rather non-trivial mishap) if it wasn't for Microsoft being client and pretty much sponsor of its rebirth, a bit like offering two new bolts for Frankenstein. They didn't build the monster, but they sure are rebooting the thing.
I am *so* glad that at least they don't get to run the thing. SCADA on Windows is bad enough, but so far, ESD platforms have managed to avoid that idiocy and if there's something you want to be able to trust it's ESD in a nuclear plant, especially if that has gone sideways once before.
So no, Microsoft isn't going to run the plant, but they're the actual reason it'll be revived which still makes them culpable.
Good points. Unfortunately, there's a good number of people who, when encountering the word "nuclear", just stop reading and start raging. There's also a good number of people who exhibit a similar behavior on reading the word "Microsoft". Having both words in the same article is pretty much a guarantee that the comments section will be useless.
When I'm feeling optimist, I hope that first big tech builds a crapload of carbon-neutral power generation for AI, and then the AI bubble bursts for good, leaving said generation available for useful stuff.
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