Back To The Future at Three Mile Island

I was 13 years old and the newspaper on our kitchen table had a one-word banner headline:

RADIATION

I thought: we wouldn’t be going outside that day.

Naturally, it was hazy hyperbole–the story was about a series of (actually, initially,  non-nuclear) events leading to the infamous accident at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, PA.

TMI and its tidal wave of news coverage was all the burgeoning regulatory crackdown and evolving “greenie” movement needed to demand shutdowns and construction cancellations in the nuclear industry.

Only two new reactors have come on line since Bill Clinton was president.

In the forty-plus years since, it’s been off to the races: no energy growth, coupled with demonization of the human activities that most require energy.

Ironically, it took AI to bring back TMI.

Bloomberg News reports that Three Mile Island’s current owner has struck a deal with Microsoft—the tech giant will purchase 100 percent of the output of one of the reactivated reactors to run its power-starving AI operation in the next 20 years.

New things will require more and new energy. A war on energy is really a war on the future.

It’s back to the future for Three Mile Island.