The Three Mile Island nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania will be reactivated for the first time in five years after Constellation Energy secured a deal to supply power to Microsoft’s AI operations.
Under a 20-year agreement, the plant will supply 835 megawatts to the Pennsylvania grid, creating 3,400 jobs and contributing $16 billion to the state’s economy.
The meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979 has been weaponised by nuclear denialists over decades. Yet as I point out in this editorial, the death toll at Three Mile Island was precisely zero and there were no recorded cases of nuclear contamination.
In fact the confirmed death toll in nuclear power accidents in the last 70 years is 33. Two plant workers died on the night of the Chernobyl disaster, and 28 emergency workers died later from acute radiation syndrome.
The only other fatal malfunction of a nuclear reactor was at Fukushima in 2011, when one plant worker died from acute radiation syndrome and two others died from heart attacks. .
That makes nuclear the safest way of generating electricity by far. There have been just 0.0011 deaths per TWh, making it 18 times safer than solar which is responsible for 0.02 deaths per TWh. It is 36 times safer than wind (0.04 deaths), more than a thousand times safer than hydro (1.3 deaths) and more than 4000 times safer than biomass (4.8 deaths).
Fewer people have died as a result of nuclear power accidents than died in the Hindenburg disaster (death toll 36) .
Bowen should take note: It matters not whether the hydrogen is green, brown, blue or a fetching shade of pink. Its flammability and explosive qualities remain the same.
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