Sometimes history comes full circle: The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant is coming back online. For years, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident symbolized everything that was scary about atomic energy and turned public opinion against nuclear power.
On March 28, 1979, I was serving my annual Naval Reserve duty in Norfolk, VA, and stopped by the officers’ club after work. I sat at the bar near a group of nuclear submarine officers enjoying drinks and talking quietly at a nearby table.
Nuclear submarine officers are a special breed. At one time every officer applying for the nuclear program (including a couple of my Officer Candidate School classmates) was interviewed by Admiral Hyman Rickover, the genius founder of the nuclear Navy. Nuclear submariners are highly educated, intensively trained and undergo psychological screening: precisely the kind of serious professionals you want defending us from the bad guys. They are not as much fun to drink with as destroyer sailors or fighter pilots, however.
Shortly after I sat down the TV news came on with news of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. The TV reporters described what had happened in apocalyptic terms. As I listened to the hysterical news reports I wondered how the submarine guys (who sleep next to reactors) were taking this. Then I heard the laughter. The submarine officers, in an uncharacteristic display of mirth, thought the news reports were hilarious and were practically rolling on the floor.
Turns out they were right. The accident at Three Mile Island, damaging as it was, caused no casualties and had no detectable health effects on the plant workers or surrounding public. It exposed problems with the design and operation of nuclear plants that led to tighter regulations and improvements across the nuclear industry.
In succeeding years the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 taught the industry not to build reactors without containment vessels, and the Fukushima disaster in 2011 demonstrated that nuclear plants on earthquake faults are a bad idea. Both incidents were greeted with the same panic as Three Mile Island with anticlimactic results. Nuclear reactors have safely powered generations of Navy submarines and aircraft carriers and wood-burning stoves have killed more people than nuclear power plants.
Still, fear of nuclear energy continued as countries like Germany, Italy and Taiwan phased out their nuclear power plants, often at the expense of environmental goals. Environmental groups opposed emission-free nuclear energy as passionately as they fought coal plants and oil pipelines. Adverse public opinion brought nuclear expansion to a halt in much of the world.
The United States effectively stopped building new nuclear reactors between 1977 and 2013 The few projects under way were delayed by legal and regulatory opposition. At the same time, the fracking revolution made natural gas more economical.
A notable exception to the anti-nuclear trend was China, which steadily opened nuclear power plants (along with coal plants and renewables) while selling solar panels and windmills to the West. China leads the world in overall energy production and is surpassing the U.S. in nuclear energy.
Now nuclear power is making a comeback. Development of smaller, modular reactors promises to make nuclear power cost-competitive with other energy sources. Environmentalists who once opposed nuclear power now acknowledge it as a carbon-free energy source. This is part of a shift toward more moderate climate policies in the U.S. and Europe as taxpayers and consumers push back against draconian environmental rules.
Public opinion has turned around. In 2016, 54% of Americans opposed nuclear energy with 44% in favor. Today 61% favor nuclear energy with only 35% opposed.
The tipping point was artificial intelligence and its massive need for electricity. AI is a strategic imperative in which the U.S. must innovate or fall behind as a world power. Tech companies are scrambling to build massive AI data centers that use as much electricity as an entire city, more power than solar panels and windmills can handle.
Expanding the power grid to handle AI data centers is the equivalent of the Cold War arms race in megawatts rather than megatons. This time China is ahead and the U.S. needs to catch up. So nuclear power is having its come-to-Jesus moment. The fastest way to bring more power online until new reactors can be built is to reactivate older nuclear plants that had been shut down.
So Three Mile Island Unit 1, which shut down in in 2019, is being restarted as the Crane Clean Energy Center. It’s the companion to Three Mile Island Unit 2 that melted down in 1979. It will start generating power in 2027 with the help of a federal loan.
I’ll bet the submarine guys are pleased.
Three Mile Island is back
Sometimes history comes full circle: The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant is coming back online. For years, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident symbolized everything that was scary about atomic energy and turned public opinion against nuclear power.
On March 28, 1979, I was serving my annual Naval Reserve duty in Norfolk, VA, and stopped by the officers’ club after work. I sat at the bar near a group of nuclear submarine officers enjoying drinks and talking quietly at a nearby table.
Nuclear submarine officers are a special breed. At one time every officer applying for the nuclear program (including a couple of my Officer Candidate School classmates) was interviewed by Admiral Hyman Rickover, the genius founder of the nuclear Navy. Nuclear submariners are highly educated, intensively trained and undergo psychological screening: precisely the kind of serious professionals you want defending us from the bad guys. They are not as much fun to drink with as destroyer sailors or fighter pilots, however.
Shortly after I sat down the TV news came on with news of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. The TV reporters described what had happened in apocalyptic terms. As I listened to the hysterical news reports I wondered how the submarine guys (who sleep next to reactors) were taking this. Then I heard the laughter. The submarine officers, in an uncharacteristic display of mirth, thought the news reports were hilarious and were practically rolling on the floor.
Turns out they were right. The accident at Three Mile Island, damaging as it was, caused no casualties and had no detectable health effects on the plant workers or surrounding public. It exposed problems with the design and operation of nuclear plants that led to tighter regulations and improvements across the nuclear industry.
In succeeding years the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 taught the industry not to build reactors without containment vessels, and the Fukushima disaster in 2011 demonstrated that nuclear plants on earthquake faults are a bad idea. Both incidents were greeted with the same panic as Three Mile Island with anticlimactic results. Nuclear reactors have safely powered generations of Navy submarines and aircraft carriers and wood-burning stoves have killed more people than nuclear power plants.
Still, fear of nuclear energy continued as countries like Germany, Italy and Taiwan phased out their nuclear power plants, often at the expense of environmental goals. Environmental groups opposed emission-free nuclear energy as passionately as they fought coal plants and oil pipelines. Adverse public opinion brought nuclear expansion to a halt in much of the world.
The United States effectively stopped building new nuclear reactors between 1977 and 2013 The few projects under way were delayed by legal and regulatory opposition. At the same time, the fracking revolution made natural gas more economical.
A notable exception to the anti-nuclear trend was China, which steadily opened nuclear power plants (along with coal plants and renewables) while selling solar panels and windmills to the West. China leads the world in overall energy production and is surpassing the U.S. in nuclear energy.
Now nuclear power is making a comeback. Development of smaller, modular reactors promises to make nuclear power cost-competitive with other energy sources. Environmentalists who once opposed nuclear power now acknowledge it as a carbon-free energy source. This is part of a shift toward more moderate climate policies in the U.S. and Europe as taxpayers and consumers push back against draconian environmental rules.
Public opinion has turned around. In 2016, 54% of Americans opposed nuclear energy with 44% in favor. Today 61% favor nuclear energy with only 35% opposed.
The tipping point was artificial intelligence and its massive need for electricity. AI is a strategic imperative in which the U.S. must innovate or fall behind as a world power. Tech companies are scrambling to build massive AI data centers that use as much electricity as an entire city, more power than solar panels and windmills can handle.
Expanding the power grid to handle AI data centers is the equivalent of the Cold War arms race in megawatts rather than megatons. This time China is ahead and the U.S. needs to catch up. So nuclear power is having its come-to-Jesus moment. The fastest way to bring more power online until new reactors can be built is to reactivate older nuclear plants that had been shut down.
So Three Mile Island Unit 1, which shut down in in 2019, is being restarted as the Crane Clean Energy Center. It’s the companion to Three Mile Island Unit 2 that melted down in 1979. It will start generating power in 2027 with the help of a federal loan.
I’ll bet the submarine guys are pleased.
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