Michigan Plotting to Re-Open Shuttered 1970s Nuclear Plant

Calling Homer Simpson!

Power Hour

After shutting it down in 2022, Michigan is making an abrupt u-turn and is now planning to reopen an old 1970s nuclear power, according to The Wall Street Journal.

When it starts operating again in about a year, the Palisades plant would become the first decommissioned nuclear power plant in the world that would go back online, the WSJ reports, a feat that bucks the trend in old nuclear power plants going permanently dark, such as in Germany.

And there's serious money behind this: the federal government and the state are pouring $2 billion into the plant's refurbishment and reopening, a move that seeks to address AI data centers' hunger for ever more electricity, according to the WSJ's reporting.

Coupled with this is the federal government's push for nuclear power as a green, sustainable energy source, which goes against lingering public distrust and fear of nuclear power due to the Chernobyl disaster, the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania, and most recently the meltdown of the Japanese Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2011.

There are of course naysayers such as from the Sierra Club, but restarting this plant and building news ones seems like a smart move as we contend with the impact of climate change and energy-hungry data centers.

Nuclear Option

Many have pushed renewable energy sources such as solar and wind to take the place of nuclear power, such as proponents in Germany.

But these sources are intermittent, because wind always doesn't blow and the Sun doesn't shine all the time. Crucially, solar power is subjected to the infamous duck curve, which shows a mismatch between supply and demand that's shaped like the back of a duck.

Basically, the mismatch is that when solar generation is at its peak during the day, people aren't using as much electricity. But at night when people are home and using all sorts of appliances, the demand is high but supply is down.

To address renewable sources' intermittent issues, Germany has fired up an increasing amount of gas-fired power plants, which goes against its plan to cut down carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

That's why some are getting back on the nuclear power bandwagon. It's stable base load energy that can step up when solar, wind and other renewables are not generating power.

And it's green because it doesn't release any direct carbon emissions (though mining and disposing of radioactive fuel does, to some degree.)

Basically, if we want to sustain an advanced civilization while minimizing the impact of climate change, we're almost certainly gonna have to split some atoms.

Updated to properly identify the location of Three Mile Island.

More on nuclear power: AI Data Centers Need So Much Power They May Need Built-in Nuclear Reactors