On October 16, 2024, the San Diego Union Tribune published an article titled Is nuclear power making a comeback?   This pro-nuclear story was published behind a paywall, but we have summarized the key points of the story from Public Watchdogs’ less than enthusiastic perspective.

Old headline:   Is nuclear power making a comeback? And could it even happen in California? San Diego?

New headline:

Did Governor Newsom really give $1.4 Billion to a convicted felon?

A nuclear power comeback?  Are you out of your freaking mind?

Bill Gates wants to restart the infamous Three Mile Island Unit Two, which melted down on March 29, 1979 when the plant was operated by an affiliate of Southern California Edison, creating the nuclear energy industry’s worst-ever nuclear accident in the USA.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about restarting closed nuclear power plants such as the failed San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which is operated by Southern California Edison.  In fact, the idea of a nuclear revival is so popular that Nancy Pelosi’s favorite “nephew,” Gavin Newsom, has jumped on the pro-nuclear bandwagon.  As the Governor of California, Newsom delighted his corporate sponsors by floating a $1.4 Billion “forgiveable” loan of taxpayer money to the failed Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) monopoly.  The money was “loaned” to keep the poorly maintained Diablo nuclear power plant open. The plant was scheduled to close permanently on August 20, 2025.

Newsom’s pro-nuclear move came as a surprise to many because PG&E, is a criminal organization that has been found guilty in courts of killing more than 113 of its own customers.  This may be why most experts believe that taxpayers, not PG&E will be the ones who are forced to repay the $1.4 billion loan.  According to some experts, $1.4 Billion is a low-ball estimate.  John Geesman, a regulatory expert and the attorney for the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, says that keeping Diablo open through 2030 will probably cost ratepayers and taxpayers another $12 billion which works out to roughly $900 per California household, on average.*

The nuclear “revival” isn’t limited to the West Coast.  On September 20, 2024, Bill Gates announced that he wants to revive and restart the partially destroyed Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.  It should be noted that Three Mile Island is generally considered to be the worst civilian nuclear disaster in U.S. history.  It is also noteworthy that Mr. Gates plans to reopen Unit Two, which is the same reactor that forced a mass evacuation in the State of Pennsylvania when it melted down in 1979.

“In general, nuclear advocates are euphoric,” squeals Mark Nelson, the giddily enthusiastic managing director of  Radiant Energy Group, a public relations organ for the nuclear power industry.  According to Nelson, nuclear power is  “… an enormous amount of energy in a tiny amount of space, requiring almost no mining or extraction of the earth’s resources without emitting carbon, 24/7 and can last a hundred years or more at a single power plant.”

Charles Langley, the Executive Director of Public Watchdogs, says “Mr. Nelson’s claims are questionable. His statement that nuclear requires almost ‘no mining or extraction’ is ludicrous in light of the science and the facts.  Uranium mining for nuclear power is so environmentally destructive that it is actually a threat to the Grand Canyon.”

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, “All phases of uranium development — exploration, mining and milling — can pose unique threats to species, ecosystems, and human communities. From habitat destruction and disruption of wildlife to bio-accumulation and irreversible pollution of waters, today’s boom [in uranium mining] threatens to build upon uranium’s legacy of environmental and social harm.”

The deadliest stuff on earth

Once uranium has been used as fuel in a nuclear reactor it becomes eternally deadly, transmuting into new toxic metals such as plutonium, which is considered to be the world’s deadliest metal. The “used up” or “so-called “spent” nuclear fuel remains radioactively deadly for tens of thousands of years.

A “Relapse” not a “Revival”

“We call it a relapse, not a revival,” says Kevin Kamps, a radioactive waste specialist at the Maryland-based  Beyond Nuclear, “There have been other nuclear so-called boom cycles, so we’re very skeptical of the propaganda.”

The best example of a relapse came in September when the Bill Gates, the founder and “technology advisor” to Microsoft, announced plans to restart the failed reactor at Three Mile Island’s infamous “Unit 2.”  Unit 2 is the site of a disastrous nuclear meltdown that forced the evacuation of more than 140,000 Pennsylvania citizens. CBS news was so alarmed by the meltdown that on March 28, 1979, it cancelled its broadcast of the wildly popular Dallas TV series to air a one hour emergency news bulletin hosted by Walter Cronkite.

Watch Walter Cronkite’s live broadcast

When Three Mile Island was melting down, Bill Gates was 24 years old, and his company Microsoft had an estimated value of two-million dollars.  Now, 45-years later, Gates’s has a net worth of $162 billion, and he is spending 1% of that wealth on a $1.6 billion agreement to revive the failed reactor at Three-Mile-Island.

Why?  Because Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an energy hog

The reason Bill Gates needs to revive a melted-down nuclear power plant can be summed up in two letters: “AI,” the initialism for “Artificial Intelligence,” and the fact that AI data centers require horrific amounts of energy to operate.

To put things in perspective, it takes Chat GPT 2.9 watt hours of electricity to answer one question, such as “What day of the week is next Wednesday?”  To put this in perspective, 2.9 watt hours is the amount of electricity that a 100-Watt light bulb uses in eight hours (click here to access a Watt Hours Calculator).

Mr. Gates wants to go nuclear because believes the “carbon-free” electricity” from the melted down power plant can provide abundant electricity to a fleet of Microsoft data centers dedicated to artificial intelligence.  Critics say that  Gates doesn’t care if his electricity is “clean,” rather, he wants to claim it is carbon-free so that his questionable AI effort sounds clean.

Welcome to the Energy Dark Ages

If the world survives the so-called “Nuclear Renaissance,” it may well become known as humanity’s Second Dark Age, where a handful of greedy plutocrats decided to use primitive last-century nuclear technology to power an energy-gobbling AI infrastructure.  The lust for easy AI money is so intense that notorious corporate felons such as  Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, have announced that they will lend money to help triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050.

“It is essential that we accelerate the progression of planned projects into plants on the ground given the huge demand coming down the line for data centers and AI technologies,” says James Schaefer of Guggenheim Securities.

Small nuclear reactors that can fit on a truck

While large nuclear power plants, such as the now-shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, have been the norm for decades, the current trend is toward smaller nuclear plants that can be trucked in to a neighborhood or a remote location.  These “new” power plants are called “Small Modular Reactors,” or SMRs for short.   The idea is simple:  Big power plants make for big disasters, but smaller SMR plants mean smaller disasters.   This is why the industry is making a bold new push to build thousands of tiny nuclear power plants located near every data center and neighborhood.

San Diego-based General Atomics, for example, has plans to build school bus sized mini-reactors.  Small modular nuclear reactors also known as SMRs can be prefabricated in several pieces, shipped to a given location and assembled on the site, reducing the onerous capital costs that often prevent larger plants from being built.

Last month Oracle announced that it will build a data center powered by three nuclear reactors, and Google has  announced plans to purchase energy from multiple SMRs by the year 2030.  Amazon has also announced that it is working with Dominion Energy, X-Energy, and Energy Northwest to supply its electrical needs in the coming years.

At least 25 companies are developing SMRs, including TerraPower, founded by billionaire Bill Gates.

Holtec International, which consists of a hodge-podge of largely judgement-proof holding companies, and interlocking directorates, says it plans to restart the 800-megawatt reactor at the notoriously unsafe Palisades Power Plant in Michigan by the end of next year.  Holtec’s effort is backed by $1.5 billion in loans from the Department of Energy and a $300 million grant from the state of Michigan.

Like Palisades, the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station was shut down after it leaked dangerous radiation into the atmosphere.  And although Holtec has been intimately involved in the decommissioning of San Onofre, the only way to restart San Onofre’s failed power plant will be to change California law.  Under California law, nuclear plants in California cannot be built until the federal government constructs a permanent disposal site for nuclear waste.

Mark Nelson thinks California politicians should just change the law:  “If California (lawmakers) got rid of it, they would find a way to spin it as being leaders and we would pat them on the back and say, ‘You did it, buddy. Good job.’ “

But Charles Langley, executive director at Public Watchdogs disagrees, “Trying to ‘spin’ the public in favor of the world’s most expensive energy is bad policy.  Californians will not patting be nuke-loving politicians on the back, they’ll be taking names and kicking them into oblivion.”

 “Rational people — the people who understand the science — recognize that nuclear fission is a primitive last-century technology that has no place in modern society.  What we need is a renaissance in energy efficiency, not a renaissance of nuclear, because that’s a return to the dark ages of energy production” says Langley.

Mark Cooper, an analyst with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, refers to the so-called “nuclear renaissance” as “hype in full swing.”

Gary Headrick, co-founder of the influential environmental group San Clemente Green, agrees. “I don’t think it’s worth contemplating using nuclear power for anything until we figure out the waste problem,” he said.

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*Based on a population of 13,320,000 households (13.32 million).