The owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant is pursuing a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee to help finance its plan to restart the Pennsylvania facility and sell the electricity to Microsoft to power data centers, according to details of the application shared with The Washington Post. Get a curated selection of 10 of our best stories in your inbox every weekend.
The taxpayer-backed loan could give Microsoft and Three Mile Island owner Constellation Energy a major boost in their unprecedented bid to steer all the power from a U.S. nuclear plant to a single company.
Microsoft, which declined to comment on the bid for a loan guarantee, is among the large tech companies scouring the nation for zero-emissions power as they seek to build data centers. It is among the leaders in the global competition to dominate the field of artificial intelligence, which consumes enormous amounts of electricity.
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…no. Sincerely, a taxpayer P.S. have you considered budgeting and not paying for expensive coffee to pay for your expensive hobby?
Sick of all this corporate welfare
if microsoft wants the power, they can pay for it. up front, and entirely. including assuming liability for when something goes wrong, and for the ongoing storage of waste materials and the eventual decommission/clean-up of the site.
Three mile island has operated for decades safely. It closes in 2019 IIRC due to it being unprofitable, because methane was so cheap. Safety isn’t an issue.
Storage of waste is very simple. It requires a very small area, and most of the waste will be neutral in a very short period of time. The stuff that isn’t is still easy to store safely. We have plenty of solutions available for this. It’s also a non-issue.
Regardless, I agree they need to pay for the cost. If the electricity isn’t going to the people then the people shouldn’t be paying for it. Unless M$ is providing the AI garbage free of charge to the public then they get nothing out of it, and even then it would be of debatable utility.
Edit: After reading this, I’m actually not that upset. The company is valued at $80 billion apparently. There’s very little chance they default on the loan. It’s not like they’re getting the money for free. They’re just getting a loan from the Energy Department. Still, if it’s only for private use then the loan should be handled through private entities. They should go take the loan the banks offer. The only reason they’re taking this one instead is because it’s a better deal. They don’t deserve a better deal if it isn’t in the public interest.
Like fucking clockwork. Bend over, here it comes again.
That’s not at all how it works. Micro$oft paid a LOT for those congresscritters, precisely so they DON’T have to pay for it. We do. We always do.
No see that would go against big techs plan to increase their value tenfold on the back of taxpayers because “we need it”. Fuck these guys
Do not give them one penny.
So they can have an exclusive deal giving Microsoft power?
I’m pretty sure they’re going to make enough money doing that.
Nonono, you don’t get it! Microsoft is a small, low-profit business that we absolutely need to help protect cuz SoCiEtY NeEdS tHeM.
(Okay so there’s probably some military/national security angle they will push to justify it. And then bill us exorbitantly for that ai tool anyhow)
How about, ‘no’?
As a former resident of Washington, fuck that noise.
If you get a paywall, a paywall-free link is here: https://archive.ph/hoaIs
My take on this story: dragging this reactor out of mothballs is expensive and risky, and operating at 50+ year old reactor is risky. The company that owns admits it isn’t even solvent enough to run it, much less ensure the risks of operating it. Microsoft and the 3 Mile Island owner are basically asking for a multi-billion-dollar taxpayer subsidy for an enterprise—so-called AI—that eliminates jobs and is used more for revenge porn and deepfakes than it is for any societal good. This is a bad deal.
I didn’t read the article but I’m for any safe use of nuclear energy. Bringing an old reactor online might be significantly easier than building a new one.
It’s just easier because they would have to build a new reactor to modern standards, which are safer than anything built in the sixties.
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Nuclear energy had always been a way to funnel public money into private pockets. It never has and never will work without massive subsidies.
In the US. Where we run all energy production that way. That’s a pretty big asterisk. Because other countries realize it’s a public good that they cannot function without. So it’s owned and operated by the government.
It has many times. It’s cheaper in other nations. The only reason it’s so expensive and takes so long to start in the US is because dirty energy companies have gotten laws passed that make it harder “in the name of safety” or whatever they claim. Most anti-nuke groups are funded by oil companies. Nuclear energy is safe, clean, reliable, produces insignificant waste that is easily managed, and provides a baseline power that other clean sources can’t do alone.
You’re being downvoted, as is tradition, but you’ve right.
You say they’re right, but you didn’t counter any opposition. Great input. You do realize that the anti-nuke movement is largely funded by oil companies, right? If they weren’t a good alternative, why would they need to do this? They would just fail regardless. Instead we’ve passed a ton of laws increasing the cost and time to build a nuclear facility to protect them, and then people like you just repeat that it’s too expensive, or that it’s unsafe despite being essentially tied in safety with solar, and better than everything else.
I don’t support most new nuclear projects, but saying “it never has and never will work without massive subsidies” is asinine. I live in Ontario where roughly half our electricity comes from Nuclear, and that helped keep the cost reasonable for over a generation. France has also seen great success.
It only looks cheap because the real cost is never fully accounted for. Research and development are paid for by governments. Construction is massively subsidised. Then the corporations reap the profits during regular operation and the tax payer is left holding the bag again for decommissioning. This is how it happened in Germany and what is happening right now in France. The French are in such deep shit it’s not even funny any more. And I’ll bet it’s a similar situation in Canada.
This comment is getting downvoted, and I don’t oppose nuclear, but I do think it’s worth noting that the nuclear energy sector has still under-priced the costs of nuclear waste management, transportation, and storage. Engineers don’t have practical methods of building storage containers and buildings that can last as long as the half-life of nuclear waste (1,000-10,000 year), and the long tail of storage costs has not been priced into the cost. Typically, this does end up being paid for by taxpayers over the course of many years. No energy generation system is without downsides, but it’s worth acknowledging them.
I think you need to read up on shit because https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Électricité_de_France owns and operates all the large domestic reactors and they’re fully owned by the government. We can talk about how financially efficient they are - sure - but it’s a very different setup from the US where utilities, bizarrely, absolutely must be privatized.
Power is a service that costs money - it’s essential and naturally forms local monopolies… the fact that private power utilities in the US exist is the issue - not that they use nuclear reactors.
