Microsoft, Twitter/X, Facebook, Amazon and Google demand electricity for Data Centers – On June 18, 2024, the US Congress passed the misnamed “Advance Act” that will provide electric power to data-centers.
The Advance Act aims to expedite the development of next generation nuclear reactors and pays to support aging ones. It directs the Department of Energy to reduce regulatory cost for advanced reactors and provides deployment incentives.
Joe Biden signed the Advance Act into law on July 9, 2024. All this while so-called modern societies have not yet cleaned up the damaged nuclear reactors at Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. And the so-called “spent” highly radioactive nuclear fuel is still piling up at the power plants. With one exception, Onkalo in Finland, no permanent deposits for nuclear waste have been built anywhere – even though the waste needs to remain safe for 100,000 years.
The reason so many of us have not even heard about the Advance Act is that only two Senators voted against it: Bernie Sanders and Ed Markey (88 to 2). And in the House the vote was 393 to 13. There was one principled voice – and it belongs to Rashida Tlaib from Michigan. She said: “I voted present in rejection of this ridiculous decision to tie the re-authorization of vital firefighting programs for our communities together with poison pills that undermine nuclear safety …”
Come back for more programming on Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear Power when TUC Radio returns.
DATE: June and July/2024
CREDIT: Thanks to the Financial Times, CNBC, the Synapse, and the Washington Post for the clips from their articles and documentary films.
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