Three Mile Island is reopening and selling its power to Microsoft

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/20/energy/three-mile-island-microsoft-ai?Date=20240920&Profile=cnnbrk&utm_content=1726838419&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

28 Comments

  1. Private power companies forming exclusive partnerships with private tech companies to power private AI development? At least we can be assured such a lucrative industry will be well-regulated.

  2. Such a wasteful use of the resource.

    Why power ~800,000 homes when we could just make Bing more racist?

  3. So when the AI bubble bursts the following parties are likely to implode:

    * Most AI companies that piggyback on others’ actual AI services
    * AI service providers: OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI
    * AI hosting providers
    * Nuclear power plants
    * Nvidia
    * A few investment firms

    Preferably not literally when it comes to nuclear, and Nvidia needs to survive so they can make GPUs for gaming.

    Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Apple will of course survive. Their war chests could buy smaller countries.

  4. Cool! Nuclear power is clean and does not release carbon into the atmosphere. When designed and run correctly, they are as safe as any natural gas fired power plant.

  5. Hi everyone,

    First of all, it has an important symbolic impact for the nuclear industry

    Second, reactor 1 not only needs uranium for the annual consomption, but also 3 times the annual uranium consumption of that reactor to create the new 1st core of the reactor.

    While in the meantime the uranium sector is in a structural global uranium supply deficit that can’t be solved in a couple years time

    Recently Kazakhstan, responsible for ~45% of world uranium productions, made a 17% cut in the promised uranium production for 2025 and said that their production in 2026 and beyond would also be lower than previously hoped

    Followed by Putin recently suggesting to restrict uranium supply to the West (uranium and enriched uranium going through Russia, so this also includes uranium from Kazakhstan that is enriched in Russia before going to the West)

    And before that production cut announcement of Kazakhstan, **the global uranium supply problem** looked like this:

    page 10 of this presentation: [https://prod.cameco.com/sites/default/files/documents/Cameco-Investor-Presentation.pdf](https://prod.cameco.com/sites/default/files/documents/Cameco-Investor-Presentation.pdf)

    For those interested:

    **Sprott Physical Uranium Trust** (U.UN and U.U on TSX) is a fund 100% invested in physical uranium stored at specialised warehouses for uranium (only a couple places in the world). Here the investor is not exposed to mining related risks.

    Sprott Physical Uranium Trust website: [https://sprott.com/investment-strategies/physical-commodity-funds/uranium/](https://sprott.com/investment-strategies/physical-commodity-funds/uranium/)

    Sprott Physical Uranium Trust is trading at a discount to NAV at the moment. Imo, not for long anymore.

    A share price of Sprott Physical Uranium Trust U.UN at ~25.77 CAD/share or ~19.01 USD/sh gives you a discount to NAV of 3.00 %

    An uranium spotprice of 120 USD/lb in the coming months (imo) gives a NAV for U.UN of ~40.00 CAD/sh or ~29.60 USD/sh.

    And with all the additional uranium supply problems announced the last weeks, I would not be surprised to see the uranium spotprice reach 150 USD/lb in Q4 2024 / Q1 2025, because uranium demand is price inelastic and we are about to enter the high season in the uranium sector.

    Alternatives:

    **A couple uranium sector ETF’s**:

    * Sprott Uranium Miners ETF (URNM): 100% invested in the uranium sector
    * Global X Uranium index ETF (HURA): 100% invested in the uranium sector
    * Sprott Junior Uranium Miners ETF (URNJ): 100% invested in the junior uranium sector
    * Global X Uranium ETF (URA): 70% invested in the uranium sector

    **Uranium Royalty Corp** (URC / UROY): the only Royalty and streaming company in the uranium sector with physical uranium and annual uranium deliveries from current productions, like Langer Heinrich mine

    **This isn’t financial advice. Please do your own due diligence before investing**

    Cheers

  6. The competing AIs are going to need all that power when they go to war with each other.

    Maybe it will be sort of like the Matrix, but people won’t matter at all.

  7. Top_Community7261 on

    The power goes out on the national grid. So can someone explain to me how this power will exclusively reach Microsoft only?

  8. timothywilsonmckenna on

    I have to admire the badassery on display from Microsoft here. Imagine if they bought it outright. I wonder if that would cost more of less than one Twitter.

  9. The idea of nuclear power is pretty sick and I’m all for it provided the US and China don’t nuke each other to kingdom come on October 23, 2077

  10. At least MS is looking for sources of green energy. They could just pay a company to build another coal-fired plant.

  11. Good, I love the first articles titles ” place of worst nuclear accident in history reopening for Microsoft” !

  12. Love to see more nuclear power coming online, but it’s kind of sickening to think that how it’s all going to power some frivolous AI bloatware instead of things people actually need, like homes, vehicles and infrastructure.

    We will never make our way to true sustainability as long as we keep inventing new energy-hungry bullshit (remember Crypto mining?) to titillate the investor class.

  13. I have no idea how nuclear power works. If a power core or fuel source is developed, where does the US dispose this? Cuz it can’t be 100% energy efficient.

  14. Also a reminder that while the Three Mile Island accident was a meltdown and breach of containment, no significant amount of radioactive material was released, just steam and gas, and the EPA has estimated that not a single additional cancer case has resulted from the disaster. The actual core was completely contained. This is in contrast to Chernobyl where the entire reactor core blew apart and spread highly radioactive material into the atmosphere, and Fukushima which also resulted in radioactive contaminants being released.

  15. Dangerous-Safety-223 on

    Mention nuclear in Australia and watch the fear mongering set in. We let that ship sail decades ago, it’ll cost an absolute fortune to set up multiple sites in today’s world

  16. abatwithitsmouthopen on

    Would be a lot cooler if the government actually opened up more nuclear power plants instead of just selling it to big tech companies

  17. I just came here to say that I’m uninformed on the matter, however I have watched the show Chernobyl and this terrified me!!! /s