“Constellation Energy is in talks with the Pennsylvania governor’s office and state lawmakers to help fund a possible restart of part of its Three Mile Island power facility, the site of a nuclear meltdown in the 1970s…Constellation is advancing plans to revive part of the southern Pennsylvania nuclear generation site, which operated from 1974 to 2019. The nuclear unit Constellation is considering restarting is separate from the one that melted down,” reports Reuters:
No U.S. nuclear power plant has been reopened after shutting. A restart is expected to be costly, logistically challenging and met with public and political opposition…Still, as the United States faces a sudden rebound in power demand from [high-tech] industries, the virtually carbon-free electricity source has received fresh support….A shut Michigan nuclear plant, which was recently awarded a $1.5 billion conditional loan to restart…could serve as a private-public sector blueprint for Three Mile Island….
“Though we have determined it would be technically feasible to restart the unit, we have not made any decision on a restart as there are many economic, commercial, operational and regulatory considerations remaining,” Constellation spokesperson Dave Snyder said….Shares of Constellation…have risen roughly 80% this year on the prospect of the company cashing in on big tech’s voracious demand for carbon-free electricity to power a rapid expansion of technologies such as generative artificial intelligence.
Global nuclear power generation is set to reach an all-time high next year, according to the International Energy Agency. That will aid “efforts to cut carbon dioxide emissions,” notes the Financial Times.
Power generated by nuclear power plants is expected to rise by about 3 per cent in both 2024 and 2025, and by an additional 1.5 per cent in 2026, according to the IEA. By contrast nuclear power production fell in 2022 as nuclear power plants closed in Germany and some other places that have an irrational phobia of nuclear power.
A recent study found that nuclear power is best for the environment. Yet green activists in places like Germany have still forced the closure of nuclear power plants. And they have done so even though “every major study, including a recent one by the British medical journal Lancet, finds the same thing: nuclear is the safest way to make reliable electricity,” says a long-time environment activist. “Solar panels require 17 times more materials in the form of cement, glass, concrete, and steel than do nuclear plants, and create over 200 times more waste,” such as “dust from toxic heavy metals including lead, cadmium, and chromium.” Unlike wind farms, nuclear power plants don’t kill birds. And “wind turbines, surprisingly, kill more people than nuclear plants.” “Nuclear power is the safest form of energy we have, if you consider deaths per megawatt of energy produced,” notes Yale University professor Steven Novella.
Nuclear plants generate most electric power in countries like France and Slovakia, but in the U.S., nuclear power plants provide only about 19% of all power. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission makes it very expensive to construct a nuclear plant — even the application process is incredibly expensive and usually takes years of unnecessary delay. Even when nuclear plants are already operating safely and providing badly needed power, anti-nuclear activists sometimes get government officials to shut them down. Recently, however, the NRC approved the construction of a nuclear plant with an innovative design and a non-water cooled reactor.
