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Three Mile Island Considers Nuclear Restart (reuters.com) 94

Posted by BeauHD from the what-to-expect dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: 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, three sources familiar with the discussions said on Tuesday. The conversations, which two sources described as "beyond preliminary," signal that 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.

The sources said that a shut Michigan nuclear plant, which was recently awarded a $1.5 billion conditional loan to restart from the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, could serve as a private-public sector blueprint for Three Mile Island. The sources asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the discussions. "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 in an email. Snyder did not comment on the specifics of discussions about reopening the Pennsylvania site.

Last month, Constellation told Reuters that it had cleared an engineering study of Three Mile Island, though it was unknown if the Baltimore, Maryland-based energy company would move forward with plans to reopen the site. Constellation also said that given the current premium placed on nuclear energy, acquiring other sites was generally off the table and the company would instead look to expand its existing fleet. The Three Mile Island unit that could be restarted is different to the site's unit 2, which experienced a partial meltdown in 1979 in the most famous commercial nuclear accident in U.S. history. The report notes that "no U.S. nuclear power plant has been reopened after shutting." A restart will not only be costly, but it will be challenged over safety and environmental concerns.
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Three Mile Island Considers Nuclear Restart More

Three Mile Island Considers Nuclear Restart

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  • Woot! (Score:1, Troll)

    by LazLong ( 757 )

    Go nuclear!

    And first post!!

    • Brother Giskard, why would people want to install a "nuclear intensifier" in some odd location on Earth?

    • no, see if geothermal can be used there

      • no, see if geothermal can be used there

        Tell us you have no idea where Three Mile Island is located without telling us you have no idea where Three Mile Island is located.

      • Three Mile Island is an island in the middle of a river in the Susquehanna River Valley in Pennsylvania.

        You heard of a lot of hot magma flows under the Appalachian Mountains and the north Chesapeake Bay area? There a bunch of natural hot springs through there? Any volcanic activity whatsoever?

    • Todays millennial and gen z pussies dont have the gen x balls to survive another one of these.

  • Let's all register for Cause And Effect 101! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Friday July 12, 2024 @11:15PM (#64622513)

    A restart will not only be costly, but it will be challenged over safety and environmental concerns.

    It wouldn't be costly if you dipshits hadn't'a shut it down.

    It wouldn't be challenged in court if you take away the treehuggers' standing to sue and derail critical infrastructure projects. You know, like every other civilized country on the planet does that can actually build things.

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yeah, get'em! Make it just like Tiananmen Square and roll over them with a tank! Red Team all the way! Woot!

    • Summary says it already operated for 45 frickin' years before they shut it down in 2019. Doesn't sound like a case of mothballing something that was still shiny & new.

      • The greenies like to tell me that throwing things away just because it isn't shiny and new constitutes wastefulness and irresponsibility.

        Having grown up considerably less affluent than I find myself now, this speaks to me. Deeply. I like fixing shit instead of throwing it away. I kept my cheapo freebie coffee maker going for 15 years. I kept my first car for long after I could afford a nicer one. The other week I repaired a broken wire inside a vacuum cleaner my inlaws gave me.

        Which is why it really sticks

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
          It was closed down because it wasn't profitable, not because of environmentalism. In terms of "cash for clunkers", that was mostly an economic stimulus to the automotive industry nothing to do with environmental concerns. However, old cars can be polluting to an extent that scrapping them really is less damaging to the environment. Equally, for other things, mending things makes more sense. You have to take it on a case-by-case basis.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) *

      The opposition was a Soviet psyop to keep America from making rapid progress.

      Long after the fall of the Soviets we have some commie stay-behinds.

      Notable Gore and his cohory in their 1993 attack on much safer nuclear.

    • Re:Let's all register for Cause And Effect 101! (Score:5, Informative)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Saturday July 13, 2024 @12:53AM (#64622591)

      It wouldn't be costly if you dipshits hadn't'a shut it down.

      It wouldn't be challenged in court if you take away the treehuggers' standing to sue and derail critical infrastructure projects. You know, like every other civilized country on the planet does that can actually build things.

      https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019... [kpbs.org]

      In 2017, Exelon said it would close if it couldn't get a key subsidy from the state that would help it compete with an energy market flooded with cheaper natural gas.

      Capitalism, baby.

      • It couldn't make a profit in the short term. That's all anyone cares about.

        • It couldn't make a profit in the short term. That's all anyone cares about.

          Nonsense. There's plenty of patient money.

          Trillions are invested in "growth funds" that invest for the long term.

          Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Tesla are obvious examples of investments that took years or even decades to turn a profit.

      • It is not "capitalism", it is free market with freedom of contract and rule of law.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      It wouldn't be costly if you dipshits hadn't'a shut it down.

      That's not how anything works, especially nuclear power. You're living in a strange fantasy where we build things which last forever, we don't. 50 year old reactors are expensive to run because (and this is true) they are 50 years old and falling apart.

      • 45 years of exposure to radiation tends to do that to the materials that nuclear power stations are made out of.
      • All energy production ages.

        The limit for nuclear used to be 50 years. These days people are talking about 80 years though. What ages is the concrete structures and steel pressure vessels.

        • The limit for nuclear used to be 50 years. These days people are talking about 80 years though.

          No one is talking about 80 years. Sanction periods for reactors increase in small increments only and are conditional on maintenance and inspection. The fact that something is still running after 50 years doesn't change it's design life. In order to extend to the run time costly maintenance is required. You can't build once and pretend you can run forever. No energy production has a design life of 80 years beyond the primary structure.

          • 20 US reactors are planning to operate up to 80 years and probably more in the future.
            • ... more reactors.

            • 20 US reactors are planning to operate up to 80 years and probably more in the future.

              Maybe you have reading comprehension issues. Precisely zero reactors are planned to run for 80 years. They are all beyond their design life and thus all require expensive maintenance and inspection to continue to operate that long. Precisely none of them have been sanctioned to operate for that long without inspection conditions at periodic intervals. Their operators are planning to run that long, but that doesn't mean they can do it, doesn't mean they were designed to do it, doesn't mean they aren't past e

    • Please define "you dipshits" so we know what the hell you're talking about.

      For the record: TMI's Unit 1 reactor closed in 2019 because owner Exelon said it wasn't competitive against cheaper methane gas and renewable sources amid flat demand for power. Thus, the previous owner who did the shutdown disagrees with you, and I'm guessing they have a far more complete data set to analyze and make a decision with than you do.

  • Probably not the first (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday July 12, 2024 @11:16PM (#64622517)

    Three Mile Island sounds like it's a good ways behind Palisades Nuclear Plant [canarymedia.com] in Michigan, which already has a $1.52 billion federal loan to restart.

    Nuclear energy has been the one bright spot in a pretty tormented political landscapes, with most politicians of most parties strongly supporting nuclear power now. And an energy-rich nation, or even planet, thrives.

    Even countries like Serbia that banned nuclear power before are now forming a nuclear energy program [world-nuclear-news.org]...

    With much greater deployment of course, brings greatly reduced costs. All those estimates of nuclear power being expensive you hear are all based on old one-off designs, bit on modern reactors where they can share designs and construction techniques across dozens of sites China has led the way on this showing that nuclear plants can be developed cheaply and safely.

    Before too long every major city will have giant stacks wafting steam into the air as they provide all the energy resents need at a fraction of todays prices.

    • Before too long every major city will have giant stacks wafting steam into the air as they provide all the energy resents need at a fraction of todays prices.

      LOL. You've just got to tell us where you scored whatever you're smoking.

      • the giant stacks wafting steam are actually cannabis vape I reckon.

        I mean I'm one of slashdot's resident nuclear proponents and even I think that's a fever dream.

    • Is this to supply power to the billionaire-owned corporations that are building giant, energy-thirsty bullshitting machines, AKA LLMs?

      • Is this to supply power to the billionaire-owned corporations that are building giant, energy-thirsty bullshitting machines, AKA LLMs?

        Yes at first, but the awesome thing is that after that craze fades, so many places will have giant nuclear plants set up that can run for 100 years producing clean power for the people around the area, to do whatever they like - fantastically cheap because AI will have paid for the construction, which is the expensive part of nuclear plants.

        • No, the article is about resurrecting 1/2-century old nuclear reactors. They've have one meltdown already due poor maintenance practices. You'd think they'd have learnt from their mistakes?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by kenh ( 9056 )

            No, the article is about resurrecting 1/2-century old nuclear reactors. They've have one meltdown already due poor maintenance practices. You'd think they'd have learnt from their mistakes?

            Please describe the TMI "meltdown"... the NRC calls it a partial meltdown, and the facility caused no serious health injuries, and there was minimal environmental impact. You are, I suspect confusing the TMI incident with the plot of the Hollywood movie "The China Syndrome" which was released in theaters 12 days before the accident in 1979.

            NRC report on TMI: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm... [nrc.gov]

            The China Syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

            Chernobyl had a meltdown, TMI vented some radioactive steam and s

  • Anything for consistency.

  • Worth considering (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sjames ( 1099 ) on Saturday July 13, 2024 @03:49AM (#64622753) Homepage Journal

    The melted down reactor site has to be maintained for a few decades longer while things decay. What better way to make sure it stays safe than to make sure the site as a whole is a profit center.

    Keep in mind, in spite of all the hype, nobody received any significant dose of radiation from TMI.

    • Made a good movie tho, and in today's world, that's all people really want.

    • What better way to make sure it stays safe than to make sure the site as a whole is a profit center.

      You misspelled "loss center". TMI is not profitable to run. It ran at a net loss of $30million / year.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        Apparently, they expect that under current conditions it will be profitable. Otherwise they wouldn't be trying to negotiate a re-start.

        • Apparently, they expect that under current conditions it will be profitable. Otherwise they wouldn't be trying to negotiate a re-start.

          Sure and all they need to do that is a subsidy 5x the size of their net loss over the last decade of operation.

  • ... is religious.

    TMI has a religious significance to environmentalists/activists/call-them-what-you-will.

    And I mean real religious significance; these are true believers. This would be like hearing that Mecca's civic leadership was discussing putting up a series of Mohammad murals downtown.

  • To remember running for the hills when this happened. Extra points if you played SCRAM on your Atari 800.
  • This nuclear restart is being considered because AI datacenters need more power. These AI companies have loads of cash and they are smart and they want to be green.
    BUT: they are choosing to go with nuclear rather than wind/solar + batteries
    CONCLUSION: when put to the test, in the real world, by really smart people, for reliable base load power, nuclear is your best option.

    • This nuclear restart is being considered because AI datacenters need more power.

      Don't jump to conclusions. No this nuclear restart is not being considered yet. The operator is simply asking for a government handout, ... again. The whole reason they shut the plant down is because they didn't get a handout 5 years ago.

    • CONCLUSION: when put to the test, in the real world, by really smart people, for reliable base load power, nuclear is your best option.

      CAVEAT: there must be a mothballed nuclear reactor sitting around ready for you to recommission at a fraction of the cost of building a new one.

      If instead of costing $1-2bn to restart we were talking about possibly $30+bn to build new (looking at you, Hinkley C), what do you think the "really smart people" would decide?

  • the site of a nuclear meltdown in the 1970s

    It is defined as a partial meltdown, with almost no impact on anyone/anything in the area:

    The Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor, near Middletown, Pa., partially melted down on March 28, 1979. This was the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history, although its small radioactive releases had no detectable health effects on plant workers or the public.

    What most people think really happened was what they saw in the Jane Fonda/Michael Douglas/Jack Lemmon/Wilford Brimley thriller "The China Syndrome"

    Its aftermath brought about sweeping changes involving emergency response planning, reactor operator training, human factors engineering, radiation protection, and many other areas of nuclear power plant operations. It also caused the NRC to tighten and heighten its regulatory oversight. All of these changes significantly enhanced U.S. reactor safety.

    Source: nrc.gov [nrc.gov]

    The movie "China Syndrome" was released exactly 12 days prior to the "partial meltdown" at Three Mile Island, where "its small radioactive releases had no detectable health effects on plant workers or the public."

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