The Answer To This Question Is No

The Detroit Free Press: Michigan wants AI jobs and 100% clean energy. But can it do both?

At the same time Michigan's Democrats have required that power generation be from 100%clean  renewable sources by  2040, they now want to add a demand of gigawatts of power form their latest shiny fetish - Data Centers.

The power demand from data centers are daunting:

DTE also plans to provide power for the Stargate campus, OpenAI announced. In an Oct. 30 earnings call, DTE officials said they secured an agreement to power a 1.4-gigawatt data center. For reference, DTE’s Fermi 2 nuclear plant in Newport produces about 1.2 gigawatts of power, enough energy to power a city of a million people, according to the company. OpenAI said the power used for its Stargate campus will come from existing energy supply, and DTE said the data center will absorb electric costs, not local ratepayers.  

Not likely. Especially as the Democrats don't want increase reliable baseline production most especially not with nuclear power.

That one data center will take all of Fermi 2's generation just by itself, forget adding another data center.  They want even more. We're already susceptible to brown outs due to a lack of generation capability here,  and they want to add data centers to add to the load without increasing generation capability.

Unicorns and rainbows aren't going to power the Michigan Democrat's data center dreams. Until Dems get serious about power generation, this demand fir shiny hip data centers need to be stopped as it is unplugged from reality.

Michigan Greenies Begin To Realize They Need Nuclear Power

The Pallisades Nuclear Plant should never have been shut down to begin with, but Michigan's Democrats wanted it shut down as "nukes bad".

The Democrats then realized that if they're going to go to an electric car heavy transportation grid and cut out coal power generation at the same time, their renewable project was not going to be able to cut it and provide reliable power in the face of increasing demand. Do recall that Governor Whitmer was all for shutting it down until she claimed to be against doing so at the last minute when it was too late to prevent the shutdown so she could be on both sides of the fence.

So we get:

The Detroit News: Palisades nuclear plant gets $1.5B federal loan in bid to reopen, a national first

It should never have been shut down in the first place, and Michigan is going  to need more nuclear power generation, not less, if the Democrats persist on getting rid of reliable baseline power and replacing it with  unreliable solar and wind that can't meet the demand.

Green Dreams And Brownouts

 This is what happens when the greenies in power think electricity comes from skittles and unicorn farts.

Gov. Whitmer has been on a binge being against coal and nuclear and  focusing on the rather unreliable renewable and with magic thinking expecting solar and wind to eventually cover 100% of the state's energy needs. 

So while eschewing coal and nuclear, refusing to allow the building of coal and nuclear plants and having magic thinking instead of actually heeding reality and "following the science", Michgian is gonna get this:

The Detroit Free Press: With summer heat and storms brewing, some say Michigan is headed for brownouts

The reality is there is currently insufficient power generation to keep up with the projected demand.

Even worse, two coal plants are being shut down, and  the Pallisades nuclear plant is now shut down  taking plenty of clean, reliable power offline right when it is needed the most.  That the nuclear plant provides electricity and needed to stay open to prevent a loss of capacity. 

Gov. Whitmer was all for the shutdown before she was against it.

So, she decided to grandstand and ask it to stay open long after the decision to shut it down was made ,and the shut down was underway in the final stages and she did far too little and too late to keep it open and the closing was assured before she spoke up.  She had 4 years to speak up against the closing and plan for it, and she wholly failed to do so.  Her "attempt" if you can call it that to avert the shutdown seems to be more for show than anything else.

But don't worry, I'm sure Gov. Whitmer and her greenie allies will have all the infrastructure and power generation available for charging all those Electric Vehicles they're pushing.   If you believe that, I  have a nice bridge for sale that's linking the Michigan peninsulae together that's in great shape.

There's something about disasters that brings out the stupid...

Japan suffers a massive tsunami with unbelievable destructive power (see the before and after pics at the link and be stunned). Thousands are killed or missing. There's even a volcanic eruption and a release of radioactive material from some nuclear plants.

In short Japan just got hit by everything but Godzilla and the Japanese people are hanging tough and responding impressively well to the disaster.

So of course here in the US, the weak-kneed Greenies use it to immediately attack nuclear power.

The Detroit News: Japan ignites fears about Fermi

Of course, Laura Berman of the Detroit News lines up all the anti-nuclear suspects, and gives them plenty of space in the article to spread fear, with only a tiny space for the operator of Fermi to comment.

The scare tactic is pretty overwrought and overdone:

Like its Japanese counterparts, Fermi 2 requires huge amounts of electricity to pump water to cool its core in an overheating situation. It also needs power to circulate water for the radioactive spent fuel pool that's part of the facility.

But in the event of a disaster (tsunami, bomb-drop, direct tornado hit), power blackouts can occur. Indeed, during a 2003 outage in Michigan, Fermi 2 was down for over six hours, an event complicated by the failure of a backup generator.

Methinks Berman really overexaggerates the risk here.

There have been no reported tsunamis near Fermi 2, nor are any likely, now or ever. You'll note that for all of her hand-wringing over the 2003 power outage, no event occured and it was handled.

Indeed a tornado even touched down inside the plant in 2010 and no disaster occured. I wonder why Berman didn't mention that?

Perhaps because the facts would remove some of the fear her article is trying to generate about the plant and nuclear power in general?

Thankfully, my friends who have family in Japan are reporting they are ok so far.

Given the scope of this disaster and the reality of the safety of the Fermi plant, your time is far better spent making a donation to the American Red Cross for Japanese disaster relief than worrying and fearing a tsunami at the Fermi nuclear plant.