Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station

In Dauphin County, do we have a segment that says this is directly relatable to the Susquehanna River? No, it's going to be different industries and different businesses that are either right on the river or that's a core part of their business.

programming or identity um and you know the question of course uh uh is i think best uh handled through a tourism lens so you're talking about uh maybe kayaking on the susquehanna river and that can be done by by uh economic analyses of you know working with uh the the outfitters and some of the the sales that we have within the region um when you're talking about things like You know, Three Mile Island, that's not through a tourism lens, but it has a very strong economic impact on the region.

So clearly the river is central, not only to our identity and to the scenery, but to so many people's working lives and You know, you couple that with a reason that a lot of people visit and that's why it is important that we, we highlight the cool things to do here that where possible we protect.

The access to these amenities and that we, we also have to be good stewards of it.

I have an update on one of our previous Scout episodes.

Two weeks ago, we heard from David Allard, the medical health physicist with more than 45 years of experience in radiation protection, who retired after 24 years as director of the Bureau of Radiation Protection with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

He talked about the environmental review the Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently did for the restart of Three Mile Island's Unit 1.

That report officially came out last week, and David reached back to let me know the NRC published their finding of no significant impact as Constellation Energy looks to restart TMI's Unit 1, rebranded as the Crane Clean Energy Center 1. in 2027.

Uh, you think the data center's gonna generate their own power through, uh, nuclear power plants or even buying power plants, then... and that's happening as well.

Three Mile Island's being resurrected by Microsoft just basically to power their data centers.

Lots of this stuff is gonna be going on over the next few years.

Absolutely, you know, craziness, and we'll see if we come out of this, and we see if we can s- you know, not hurt the rank and file people out there that just wanna power their house, [laughs] so... and don't wanna pay, you know, $10,000 a month for their power bill anymore.

You know, these are problems that are not helpful.

And so if it can push us towards, like for example, I don't know if you're familiar with what Microsoft did, but they bought Three Mile Island, and they are literally re-energizing that nuclear power plant to power their data centers.

You have multiple AI companies building nuclear power plants to, to solve the problem in the short term.

I have mixed feelings about that.

I think it was in Kansas for their power.

Microsoft bought one of the towers at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania last year.

So that's the challenge that we have.

But they're coming.

Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta are expected to spend more than $700 billion on AI infrastructure this year alone.

In Ireland, data centres already eat up more than a fifth of the country's electricity in the U.S., They're reopening Three Mile Island to power Microsoft.

And the backlash, of course, is building with dozens of communities now moving to restrict or ban them.

We've seen protests here in Vancouver as well.

compute data, so that requires a lot of brain power, let's say, so a lot of energy.

It's really a consequence of the public use or demand about technology.

Now, Ireland let data centers take over 22% of their power, and then they slammed the brakes in the U.S. They're restarting Three Mile Island for Microsoft.

In regards to the issue of power, Yes.

So Gambit has a plane.

He flies Wolverine to Three Mile Island.

So again, like a real place in real life.

I believe in the 70s there was like an actual near nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island.

to the point where like there was some radiation that leaked, I think.

Maybe it almost had a meltdown or like a leak or something, but I'm pretty sure that there was a leak at Three Mile Island in real life in the 70s at some point.

So again, kind of like with First Class, although this movie did come out before that, but kind of like with First Class, they're kind of tying some like real events to kind of drive home the years that these things are taking place.

So Wolverine gets to three mile Island.

the data centers that are being built now are really being – are really using renewable energies? SECRETARY TILLERSON

Well, there's one out near Harrisburg that wants to get Three Mile Island running again to use their power.

They're – they are using renewable energy.

They're using batteries.

And I live in South Central PA.

Three Mile Island is literally three miles from my house.

So we're going to have data centers in our backyard, regardless of whether we want them or not.

Right.