You Know that AI Has Jumped the Shark When

Microsoft proposes restarting the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant to power their LLM efforts.

Truth be told, this is more like jumping C. megaladon.*

Are these people even listening themselves? 

What's next? Restarting Chernobyl or using Fukushima for cooling water?

The idle Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear power plant may soon be coming back online in Pennsylvania, thanks to a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) between Microsoft and Constellation Energy, which owns the shuttered facility.

TMI Unit 1, which was retired for economic reasons in 2019, is slated for a potential revival as the Crane Clean Energy Center (CCEC), according to Constellation's announcement of a new PPA with the IT giant.

While the terms of the deal remain undisclosed, reopening the facility will require approval from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, though that might not be a hard sell.

It SHOULD be a hard sell.  It should be a f%$#ing hard sell.

Constellation noted that Unit 1 will need "significant investments" to restore the plant, with work needed on the turbine, generator, main power transformer, and cooling and control systems.

So basically, they have to replace or refurbish or refuel everything?  That's reassuring.

Lest you think this is the same Three Mile Island facility that had a partial meltdown in 1979, described as the worst commercial nuclear accident in US history, it's not: That happened at TMI Unit 2, located next door.

By next door, they mean in the same facility, and designed by the same firm, with slight differences in size and power output.

Unit 1, on the other hand, "operated at industry-leading levels of safety and reliability for decades before being shut down for economic reasons," according to Constellation. The facility was shut down after it failed to get a needed subsidy renewed that the company said was key to competing with cheaper fossil fuels.

Yeah, that's kind of like saying, "Yeah, what happened at Grenfell Tower was bad, but look at all the other buildings with aluminum faced polyisocyanurate panels.  None of them have burnt down.

^*The largest shark, and likely largest predator fish ever. It died out some 1.5 million years ago. The Genus is still in dispute, between either Carcharodon (Great White) or Carcharocles (broad toothed Mako). So in jumping C. Megalodon, you have jumped the biggest shark ever.