Constellation Energy plans to invest $1.6B to revive the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania and sell all the output to Microsoft for AI energy demands. - eviltoast

Three Mile Island was the worst nuclear accident in US history. Was mainly caused by poor design of human feedback systems which caused operational confusion and lead to a catastrophic failure.

  • datendefekt@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    Wait, so you think nuclear reactors spew out uranium?

    Didn’t say that. But I also don’t think that it magically appears in the plant.

    While coal powerplants don’t spew out radioactive coal ash??

    Please stop this whataboutism.

    Nobody cares to recycle concrete.

    Not true. Making concrete creates huge amounts of CO2 during production. Sand is becoming a valuable resource. Recycling concrete for aggregate absolutely is a thing, but that’s a different topic.

    I wont talk about storing waste, because I dont know why it is marketed as prohibitively expensive.

    Convenient. Then I will because I’m not finished. You have to ensure containment of the barrels for decades, if not centuries. The mine has to be in geologically inactive area, and you have to be certain that no ground water will seep into the mine in the foreseeable future. We don’t want ground water in the mine, its cold and wet and seeps through everywhere.

    And you have to figure out how to keep idiots from breaking into the mine in 150 years and using spent rods to heat their homes. If you think that’s far fetched I encourage you to read about the Goiânia accident , one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters. Some kids found the radioactive source of an abandoned xray machine while playing around.

    • Eximius@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      It’s not whataboutism: https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-wastes-coal-fired-power-plants

      You said yourself that concrete is not recycled, and it is upcycled only for aggregate, can use any rocks for that. Nobody is converting cement to cement clinker.

      Keep idiots from breaking in to the mine that has “radioactive” signs is quite far fetched. You dont just accidentally stumble on an opened mineshaft and accidentally have keys to the lift to go down 100m.

      • LordGimp@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        It’s worse than stumbling into a mine. Look up RTGs. They’re nuclear batteries that have half lives of ~90 years that the USSR loved to sprinkle all over the woods when they couldn’t be assed to maintain their own infrastructure for more than a few years. They were largely abandoned during the collapse, but hunters and scavengers still find these things and even drag them back to the village from time to time. Kills a few dumb villagers pretty bad every time it happens. There are more than 1000 of these things still out there, mostly unaccounted, and very few if any even have warning signs, let alone high security like a fence.

        • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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          2 months ago

          Look up NASA’s versions of RTGs. Just because Russia did everything wrong doesn’t make a technology bad, just mishandled.