• rtxn@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I know certain sentiments are coming, so I’ll put this here: Three Mile Island wasn’t the unmitigated disaster that fearmongers would have you believe. It was an ultimately harmless accident that was highly publicized because of poor communication and irresponsible sensationalist journalism.

    More on the topic: https://youtu.be/cL9PsCLJpAA

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Yep. And underscoring that more than almost anything else is the fact that the TMI facility continued to operate without incident for forty years after that accident.

    • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      It was actually a success story. It failed safe, as designed.

      Unfortunately “The China Syndrome” really pumped up anti-nuclesr sentiment.

      TMI was the opposite of Chernobyl.

    • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org
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      6 months ago

      “Nuclear” sounds scary but it doesn’t have to be and generally isn’t. There are currently 94 active nuclear reactors in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States

      IMHO, the correct take on “<blank> uses enormous amounts of energy” is “yes, we do need to invest more in renewable and clean energy”. Anyone who didn’t have their head in the sand could have known that last century. This is only a problem now because our political leaders have failed us, year after year, decade after decade.

  • MissJinx@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    A nuclear plant is not a bad thing, that’s one of the cleanest eneegy sources BUT being Microsoft I’m glad it’s at least on an island

    • rtxn@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      It’s on an island, yes. In a river, ten kilometres from a dense urban region.

      • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business
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        6 months ago

        And it’s the site that an American president came closest to dying in a nuclear explosion! (I mean that’s not why it’s notable, but it’s a fun fact anyways.)

        • reddig33@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          There is nothing clean or safe about three mile island. The place had a meltdown and created tons of nuclear waste. Next you’ll be trying to tell me Fukushima and Chernobyl were safe, clean, and cheap.

        • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          While that is true, it was also the site of the worst nuclear disaster on US soil.

          Don’t get me wrong - I’m not scaremongering, and I support nuclear power. It’s just a bit darkly ironic, imo.

          • SuperIce@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            It was partial meltdown and the failsafe worked. No one was injured or had their health negatively affected by the incident. The worst nuclear disaster still had less negative effects than even a single modern coal plant does.

  • ano_ba_to@sopuli.xyz
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    6 months ago

    Don’t get me wrong, nuclear energy is good. It’s just being used to power AI. That’s a waste. It’s being used so a corporation can profit, not to power homes. It’s being used to potentially replace humans, who need less power to function and whose power consumption cannot already be avoided anyway.

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      6 months ago

      I hadn’t realized until I hung out on a Europe forum that anti-nuclear-power positions are very strong in Germany with the center-left.

      Western Austria also has a history here. At one point, they infamously built an entire nuclear power plant – which is where the real costs of nuclear power come from – and then shut it down via a referendum driven by the anti-nuclear-power crowd before ever actually using it.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plant

      The Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant was the first commercial nuclear plant for electric power generation built in Austria, of three nuclear plants originally envisioned. Construction of the plant at Zwentendorf was finished but the plant never entered service. The start-up of the Zwentendorf plant, as well as the construction of the other two plants, was prevented by a referendum on 5 November 1978, in which a narrow majority of 50.47% voted against the start-up.[1][2]

      The plant was purchased by Austrian energy company EVN Group in 2005; it is used as a security training centre[6] and leased for filming, photography, and other events.[7] In 2025, it will be used as the training ground for ENRICH European Robotics Hackathon.[8]

    • 100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it
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      6 months ago

      I live in Italy. I may even trust nuclear power (even though I’m not sure if waste management has improved), I don’t trust actual human beings handling contracts, funds, and maintenance.

      A bridge collapsed in Genoa, killing 43 people, splitting the city in two, and crippling the economy because Autostrade per l’Italia skirted the pesky issue of maintenance.

  • burt@programming.dev
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    6 months ago

    I live near enough to TMI that a catastrophic event would be severely detrimental to my health, but I see this as a good thing (if you can call AI good). Clean, safe energy, and jobs for people in an area that needs jobs, win-win.

  • HowManyNimons@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    ELI5 please why they don’t just put their server farms in a desert, roofed with solar panels and a big-bum battery?

    • BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The Susquehanna River that Three Mile Island sits on offers virtually unlimited fresh cold water for cooling the server farm.

      • SplashJackson@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        Fucking up the temperature downstream; global warming baby! But who needs that ecosystem? It’s survive or die, and that includes the beavers! Down with trees, up with fleas(markets)!

  • el_eh_chase@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 months ago

    Knowing the incompetence of Microsoft is making me re-think my pro-nuclear stance…maybe it should be banned.

  • Mwa@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    ah yes nothing will go wrong no meltdowns whatsoever