• rtxn@lemmy.world
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    5 days 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

    • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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      5 days 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.

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Heh, you see my posts? That movie came out not 2-weeks ahead of 3-Mile. Freaky isn’t it?

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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      5 days 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.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Posted this earlier:

      A poof of radioactive steam let loose. That’s it, the whole incident. People freaked out on March 28, 1979.

      In totally unrelated news, The China Syndrome, a popular movie about a reactor meltdown, came out March 16, 1979.

    • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org
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      5 days 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.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      I thought the Netflix show was pretty clear it wasn’t as bad as popular history made it out to be.

  • ano_ba_to@sopuli.xyz
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    5 days 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.

  • MissJinx@lemmy.world
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    5 days 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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      5 days 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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        5 days 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.)

        • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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          4 days 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.

          Edit: I gotta go down these Wikipedia rabbit holes you guys are pointing me towards, because I’m clearly somewhat misinformed here. Seriously, thanks for sharing!

          • SuperIce@lemmy.world
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            5 days 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.

          • rtxn@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            Calling it “the worst nuclear disaster” is not just incorrect but stupid. Just off the top of my head, I can name a worse reactor accident and a worse non-reactor nuclear accident on US soil.

            SL-1, a low-power reactor in Idaho, exploded because of poor design and human error. An operator retracted the manually operated control rod too far. The reactor went prompt critical, causing a steam explosion, destroying the reactor vessel and killing all three operators. To this day, SL-1 is the only fatal reactor accident on US soil.

            Cecil Kelley, a worker at Los Alamos, was fatally irradiated when a plutonium reclaimer machine went critical. The machine contained an aqueous mixture of plutonium slag of a much higher concentration than it should have, causing an excursion when the stirring was turned on. He died two days later. His autopsy was performed by one Dr. Lushbaugh, who removed several organs for experiments without permission.

            TMI had zero fatalities, minimal release of radiation, and no measurable effect on health. Area residents were exposed to less radiation than the yearly background dose.

        • reddig33@lemmy.world
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          5 days 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.

          • rtxn@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            TMI had zero fatalities, minimal release of radiation, and no measurable effect on health. Residents of the area were exposed to less radiation from the accident than the yearly background dose.

            Some layers of safety failed, but the rest did their job. That’s why we call it an accident and not a disaster. The plant continued to operate for decades with no issues. The only reason it’s so prevalent in the public consciousness is because of faulty reporting and irresponsible, ignorant people (like you) parroting the first thing they hear from sensationalist media.

  • Mwa@lemm.ee
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    4 days ago

    ah yes nothing will go wrong no meltdowns whatsoever

  • burt@programming.dev
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    5 days 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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    5 days 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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      5 days 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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        5 days 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)!

      • aaaaace
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        5 days ago

        And it flows into Chesapeake bay after passing by Peach Bottom nuke plant, where unannounced inspections have revealed everyone sleeping.

        At one time, farmers used to grow popcorn on 3MI. Post-incident, pets were born with deformities on the York County side, harder to tell with the humans there.

        We won’t go into the time I drove into Indian Point during the day and found no one in attendance. No guards, gates open, etc.

        I drove all over the plant. Took a while to find anyone, and that person was annoyed at my needing to make a delivery, but there was no one at the dock.

        I’m not on either side, but if you read an article about nukes, someone paid for it, pro or con.

        It’s not that simple.

      • leftytighty@slrpnk.net
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        5 days ago

        Transit latency is a tiny tiny fraction of the round trip time for AI processing tasks. Until AI tasks are in the order of milliseconds instead of seconds it’s a rounding error.

        • ArxCyberwolf@lemmy.ca
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          5 days ago

          Don’t twist their words. The plant, when faced with a meltdown incident, was able to shut down safely with no injuries or detrimental effects to anyone, as intended. The plant then operated safely without incident for another 4 decades.