From Old to New Again

I’ve reached an age.  If you haven’t you will, and if you have, you’ll know what I’m talking about.  A few days ago, I walked into a restaurant and saw what was probably a middle-school student wearing a band t-shirt from my youth: The Cranberries.  I was immediately hit with the lyrics from their September 1994 (my sophomore year had just started) hit “Zombie.”  I remember kids donning Pink Floyd shirts when I was in school, wondering “which band member is Floyd?”  It happens, things get old and then they turn new again.

Think back to 1979.  The setting is Three Mile Island where a partial nuclear meltdown started in Unit 2.  Afterwards, the other half of the power plant that remained struggled to stay profitable and was ultimately fully shut down in 2019.  But now the power source is reemerging.  Microsoft has contracted with Constellation Energy to bring back Unit 1.  The software maker will be the only customer for the next 20 years as its energy needs expand into the new Artificial-Intelligence-centric future.  Processor chips needed for AI capabilities are notoriously power hungry, so a capital investment in procuring energy is being made. 

Three Mile Island’s meltdown lingers in the collective memory of America.  Even if one doesn’t recall that just Unit 2 suffered the meltdown, there’s a sense of understanding that a disaster happened there.  Like a zombie, it is emerging once again.  Just as the Cranberries’ song is about the enduring impact of the three-decade conflict between England and Northern Ireland, memories were created and lessons were learned at Three Mile Island that are impacting how Unit 1 is being modernized and prepared to power chips only imagined even as “recently” as 1994.