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FILE PHOTO: The Three Mile Island Nuclear power plant is pictured from Royalton, Pennsylvania, U.S. May 30, 2017.
The return of Three Mile Island
The nuclear plant on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, home to one of the worst nuclear accidents in US history, is getting a second life, thanks to artificial intelligence.
Under a new, 20-year deal, Constellation Energy will restart the famed power plant, which closed in 2019, and sell the energy to Microsoft to fuel its data centers. This is an opportunity for the computing giant to meet its incredible demands for computer processing power required for its AI ambitions and do so with a so-called clean energy source. The White House and tech leaders recently discussed a plan to use more clean energy sources for AI data centers amid conflict between the government and private sector’s AI ambitions and climate goals. Still, it could take years for the plant to get inspected, licensed, and gain federal approval from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to restart.
The Electric Power Research Institute has estimated that data centers could consume 9% of US electricity annually by 2030, up from just 4% in 2023. In May, Microsoft also signed a deal with Brookfield Asset Management to deliver the tech company 10.5 gigawatts of new renewable energy between 2026 and 2030, a massive amount that The Verge remarked was equivalent to half of California’s wind and solar capacity.
Three Mile Island’s Unit 2 had a partial meltdown in 1979, but its Unit 1 was undamaged and remained operational until 2019, when it was shut down due to financial pressures. Constellation Energy told The Wall Street Journal that Unit 1 was “arguably the best-performing reactor in America.” There are currently 94 active reactors in the country.Russia invites Africa to go nuclear
In sub-Saharan Africa, about 600 million people, half the total population, lack electricity. And with the volatility in oil prices of recent years and the need to transition toward cleaner sources of energy, many African governments now want to invest in nuclear power. Russia, beleaguered by Western sanctions, would like to help.
Today, there’s just one nuclear power station on the African continent – in Cape Town, South Africa. Egypt, Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda have already announced construction plans. Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear company, says it has signed cooperation agreements with Algeria, Burkina Faso, and Mali.
For Russia, commercial partnerships in Africa serve both economic and political purposes. They offer long-term revenue for a Russian economy saddled with sanctions and now deeply dependent for growth on wartime military production. They also provide political cover for a country that will remain isolated from the West for the foreseeable future.
For African countries that want to provide affordable electricity to hundreds of millions of people who need it – and without pumping more carbon into the atmosphere – it’s an opportunity for positive change.
But nuclear power plants generally take a decade or more to build, so it will be years before African countries benefit.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, attends the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Summit in San Francisco, California, back in November 2023.
Does AI’s power problem have a nuclear solution?
Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, has broad ambitions to solve all of the problems of AI, from algorithms to high-tech chips. But there’s one more problem on his plate: energy. Altman is backing a series of companies that hope to find a way to power the revolutionary tech, literally.
One of the startups Altman invested in is called Oklo, which is building a nuclear power plant in Idaho that could eventually power energy-guzzling data centers that AI depends on, but there is no clear public timeline for the project. Google and Microsoft have also partnered with nuclear power firms for their energy needs.
Nuclear energy comes with risks, of course, and Oklo has had trouble with regulators, which rejected applications in the past based on the lack of safety and security information provided. But going nuclear — if companies like Oklo can get it right — is also a cleaner alternative to more carbon-emitting energy sources.
How will Henry Kissinger be remembered in Europe?
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective on European politics from Stockholm.
How will Henry Kissinger be remembered in Europe?
There's always an amount of controversy around the person who's been around in politics in powerful positions for such a long time as he was. But primarily, I think he would be remembered as a great European. He was an American, no doubt. But he came out of the tragedy of Europe and he was deep concerned with all of the lessons that could be learned from the failure to preserve peace in Europe time after time. His first academic and his first book was about the Congress of Vienna. And then book after book after book, that was really around the same theme, how to preserve peace also in the age of nuclear weapons. And that, of course, from the European point of view, is not an insubstantial issue.
Is the nuclear renaissance going on in Europe?
Sort of. I would say. There are still countries that are very much opposed. The Germans are, the Austrians are, there might be others. But I noticed that in Dubai, COP28, there was now signed declaration by a number of European leaders as well to triple global nuclear power by 2050. So no doubt nuclear power will make a substantial contribution to the efforts to create a much greener and much more sustainable Europe in the decades to come.
The world’s nuclear threats and what the IAEA is doing about them
Note: This interview appeared as part of an episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, "Rogue states gone nuclear and the watchdog working to avert disaster" on January 16, 2023.
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi witnessed first-hand how close we came to another Chernobyl disaster thanks to fighting near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine. On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer asks Grossi about the world's nuclear threats and what the IAEA is doing about them. Grossi views himself as a mediator — if leaders are willing to listen to him.
Grossi, known as the top nuclear watchdog, discusses the most urgent problems he is monitoring. Kim Jong-un called for a exponential increase in his country's arsenal. Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has turned his country into the world's most dangerous rogue state. His military also controls the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in Ukraine. Putin also has at his fingertips the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, even a little larger than America's, nor has he been subtle about his willingness to use it. Meanwhile, Iran, Russia's most important military ally, has been steadily at work developing its own nuclear weapon capabilities.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Rogue states gone nuclear and the watchdog working to avert disaster
How do we avert nuclear disaster in 2023?
Rafael Grossi has a very tough job as head of the UN's nuclear watchdog. But he's an optimist.
Still, the stakes are very high.
We've got North Korea building even more nukes. Russia turned into a rogue state that controls Europe's largest power plant in Ukraine, which is still at risk of an accident. And Iran getting closer to getting the bomb.
Last but not last, there's the global race to build smaller, faster tactical nukes.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Rogue states gone nuclear and the watchdog working to avert disaster
Iran getting the bomb? Not as close as you might think
The 2015 Iran nuclear deal is pretty much dead in the water right now. And perhaps the train has already left the station because Tehran is too close to enriching enough uranium to get the bomb.
So, is it too late?
“Having the nuclear material does not mean [that] automatically that you have a nuclear weapon,” International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World. Still, Grossi would like more cooperation from the Iranians.
The IEAE, he says, "wants to provide the diplomatic, technically neutral platform for a good understanding. I hope this message is heard in Tehran.”