Microsoft Sees the Light

The Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979 single-handedly killed the nuclear power industry in the U.S. After Three Mile Island construction on nuclear power plants halted, and existing plants were decommissioned.

Today nuclear energy is undergoing something of a renaissance. Many green-energy advocates are realizing that ambitious carbon-free energy goals cannot be met by wind and solar power, let alone be "on all the time" when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.

Many tech companies, including the largest and most well-known, joined the alternative energy marching band, IMHO, because it was easy to, since their fortunes weren't tied to fossil fuels like legacy manufacturing and transportation companies.

After 2020, as the race to acquire electricity for artificial-intelligence data centers accelerated, the virtue signalling dampened down.

Big Tech needed power, and ESG (environmental, social, governance) projects did nothing to help and even inhibited that objective.

Three Mile Island will be renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center (WSJ)

In a sign that the worm has turned, Three Mile Island, the bête noire of fission haters, is being revived to power Microsoft's data centers.

A deal between Constellation Energy and Microsoft will restart Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island, the site of the country’s worst nuclear accident, to help power the tech giant’s growing artificial intelligence ambitions.

Under the agreement, Constellation would revive the plant’s undamaged reactor, which was too costly to run and closed in 2019, and sell the power to Microsoft. The plan signals the gargantuan amount of power needed for data centers for AI, along with the tech industry’s thirst for a carbon-free, round-the-clock electricity source needed to meet climate goals.

Constellation expects to spend around $1.6 billion to restart the reactor by early 2028. Microsoft has signed a 20-year power-purchase agreement with Constellation, the companies said Friday. The deal would help Microsoft pair its 24-7 electricity use with a matching source of nearby clean power generation.

It's nice to know that one of our most successful companies is able to discard green-power fantasies when the virtue-signalling impedes basic objectives.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.---1 Cor 13:11