"Too Cheap To Meter ?"

("Too Cheap To Meter ?")

When nuclear power began to be licensed for commercial use, the tag line was that so much power and electricity would be produced that "it would be too cheap to meter." The current reality is somewhat more complicated as a nuclear reactor of modern design is a modern power plant is very complex piece of machinery. The deign might be basic where the heat generated by nuclear reactions, splitting uranium pellets in stacked fuel rods creating heat. The heat moves through an exchanger where it boils water and the resulting steam powers a generator, producing electrify for the surrounding grid.

That being said, a reactor that is of poor design and prone to mis-management, like Number Four at Chernobyl that exploded in 1985, that killed hundreds in the end, and forced the abandonment of Prypiat, previously a modern Soviet town. Another nuclear accident of some note was Pennslyvania's Three Mile Island Plant, south of Harrisburg. In the 1979 event,  coolant for the core of Reactor Unit 2 leaked and a valve jammed. The now partially exposed core began to melt. When coolant was restored the rods were no longer symmetrical and a radioactive mass was the result. The only external effect was a radiological release of gases into the atmosphere.

The event at Three Mile Island had the unfortunate effect and bad timing. The movie The China Syndrome with Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas, Jack Lemmon among others portrayed an actual accident on a plant that was poorly designed and cost cutting measures by the utility company that compromised safety in the end. A "China syndrome" is when a reactor core melts through containment vessel, theoretically all the way to China. Of course the mass will have hit ground water well beforehand resulting in a radioactive explosion.

That was Hollywood. There were no casualties from the 1979 event. Unit Two has been getting cleaned up since the accident but Unit One was mot effected. A few years later TMI I was re-licensed and has gone back into operation. Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence and the massive power requitements for the so-called "data centers," Microsoft, in partnership with Constellation Energy, has taken control of the plant with the intention of using dedicated power from Unit 1, beginning in 2028.

Nuclear power can be s double-edged sword. It has great power potential, but considerable amounts of radioactive waste can result. Disposing of that waste continues to be an issue Nuclear energy does not pollute and if it can be handled properly, it can be an almost un-limited source of power. Too cheap to meter ? Probably not. But its advantages outweigh the costs.