Notes From an Environmentalist.

Bill Gates Tests fate with Three Mile Island.

Woman hold misshapen pig caused by Chernobyl radiation.

                        Bill Gates Tempts Fate  

I was a little facile when I lumped traditional nuclear reactors like Three Mile Island together with modular units that are being developed to help reduce carbon emissions.

I do see a potential role for small, safe, modular fission nuclear reactors. After all sailors have lived beside them on nuclear submarines for well over fifty years.

But isn’t Bill Gates bizarrely tempting fate by restarting Three Mile Island to power AI. While we know AI is going to make a few people rich, it has yet to be determined if it is going to ultimately help or harm humanity. Using that much power to fuel things like Chat-bots seems satirically foolhardy.

Chernobyl provides a better example of the risks involved. If someone makes a mistake making something like an offshore turbine all you have is a broken blade, no deaths, no injuries, no fish kills, just a lot bad press on a slow summer day.

But if someone makes a mistake in a nuclear power plant you can have thousands of people dying slowly from radiation and a thousand square mile left uninhabitable for the next ten thousand years as is the case with Chernobyl presently in Ukraine’s danger frought war zone.

[Special thanks to former Rep Lenny Mirra for his insightful comment.]