The Nuclear Information and Resource Service fights for a nuclear-free, carbon-free world powered by clean, renewable energy. Example: The mainstream press has told us that Microsoft wants to restart The Three Mile Island nuclear reactor and sell the electricity to power its data centers and that Amazon, Google and Facebook want to power their AI tech with Small Modular Reactors. What’s really going on?
In one word: LIES. Big lies, and lots of them. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook are already operating and building lots of AI data centers. They consume huge amounts of electricity, nearly all from coal and gas power plants. There is no chance they will run on nuclear power for years, if ever: at least 2028 for Microsoft, if TMI 1 restarts; and at least a decade for Amazon, Facebook, and Google, if and when
SMRs are approved and can be built. So Big Tech is using the “promise” of maybe buying nuclear power in the future to cover up the huge climate pollution it is causing.
But to get away with this scheme, they are also telling Big Lies that help the nuclear industry:
- Wind and solar aren’t “dependable” enough to power data centers, even though they are the fastest growing and most affordable electricity sources in the world.
- Data centers require the “always-on, baseload” power that nuclear power plants generate, even though nuclear power plants regularly shut down for days or weeks at a time.
One more fact about these deals shows how dirty the TMI restart scheme is: it also depends on blocking wind, solar, and battery storage that could provide 300 times more power than TMI I can generate. Nationwide, over 1,000,000 megawatts of renewable energy and battery projects are being delayed for years because utility companies are preventing them from connecting to the power grid.
TMI 1 could generate 800 megawatts of electricity, but there are over 200,000 megawatts of wind, solar, and storage sitting in limbo, in the same region. Constellation says the TMI 1 restart plan depends on permission to jump to the front of the line, blocking all of that renewable energy.
Source: NIRS newsletter: December 5, 2024
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
news, views & musings for our nuclear-free, carbon-free future
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