Big Tech's Energy Boom, Pennsylvania's Toxic Hangover with NO Funding!

Writing: Copyright@ Eric Epstein & Rock the Capital November 17, 2025

Data centers are a fact of life. They have supercharged the energy landscape and have the potential to benefit all facets of our lives. However, we need guardrails to ensure everyone benefits—and that ratepayers aren't left paying Big Tech's distribution costs.

The recent energy summit held on July 15, 2025 at Carnegie Mellon University was a private equity bonanza organized by hedge fund king-turned-Senator Dave McCormick. The possibilities seemed endless, but history was nowhere to be found.

Sound familiar? On August 4, 2000, Governor Tom Ridge announced that electric competition would lead to job growth, economic expansion, and decreased rates. What did we get? Customers were dumped at record rates, electric rates spiked, and taxes increased for municipalities and school districts.

Pennsylvania has been robbed before by coal barons, gas vultures, and nuclear kingpins. These corporations have no interest in cleaning up abandoned gas wells, closed coal mines, or radioactive garbage.

Pennsylvania's deep scars from its industrial past have not healed. Broken promises and misplaced priorities litter the entire Commonwealth. Are we going down the same wrong road again?

Pennsylvania's Toxic Hangover Legacy

• Abandoned gas wells: Pennsylvania has more "orphaned" gas wells than any other state in the nation—over 330,000.

• Abandoned coal mines: Pennsylvania leads the country with the most abandoned coal mines, a legacy problem stemming from over a century of mining. These sites pose risks of acid mine drainage, methane emissions, and land subsidence that devastates streams.

• Coal mine fires: Forty coal mine fires continue burning throughout the state.

• Nuclear waste: Pennsylvania has the second-largest concentration of high-level nuclear waste—8,100 tons. That number will increase by 6,000 metric tons over the next twenty years.

Pennsylvania's environmental slogan should be: "Kill, baby, kill!"

The Energy Summit That Ignored Our Past

July 15, 2025, was supposed to be the dawning of a new day. I was struck by the absence of any discussion of green energy or harnessing technology to clean up hundreds of abandoned mines, thousands of miles of acidified streams, or the remediation of countless contaminated sites throughout Pennsylvania.

The new energy era offers only a heavy dose of gas, data center transmission upgrades, and ten fantasy nuclear power plants. Distribution for AI generation will require more resilient transmission capacity. Data centers connect at much higher transmission voltages and require heavier-duty wires than typical electric users.

The critical questions remain unanswered: Are consumers paying for the upgrades? Are hostage ratepayers going to pick up the tab for exclusive contracts? Hydro will see increased capacity, but where will the energy flow?

The Lower Susquehanna Under Siege

Meanwhile, the Lower Susquehanna is under siege. Non-point source pollution, runoff, and sedimentation have taken a toll on the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The plants on this stretch of the river are operating beyond their planned design—some are 100 years old.

Then there is the crown jewel: Three Mile Island (TMI), which came online in 1974 but was designed to operate for only 40 years. TMI was minted in the same year as the Ford Pinto. Why aren't we pouring billions into restarting Ford Pinto production?

TMI-1 Litigation Status (restarting unit one):

• DEP: Third submittal for NPDES

• NRC: Name change and fuel loading

• SRBC: Application for water use

Three Mile Island is very thirsty, requiring 142 million gallons of water per day and it has an exclusive contract with Microsoft to send electricity to northern Virginia and the Midwest. We supply the energy, labor, and water—and get the radioactive garbage.

A High-Level Radioactive Waste Site

Three Mile Island is also a high-level radioactive waste site. There will be three Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations (ISFSIs) on Three Mile Island. One facility is crammed tight with 700 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste. Its next-door neighbor is the new ISFSI, which will store 700 metric tons of additional radioactive garbage.

TMI-2 (the reactor that melted down) sits idle in the river like a sunken battleship. There has not been a human entry into the basement since 1979. TMI-2 Solutions has spent $500 million of the $1 billion it raided from ratepayers and claim they need a 30-month "pause" due to a lack of funds.

The Citizens Panel met on Wednesday, September 10th, at 6:00 PM in the Olmsted Building at PSU Harrisburg and announced they were pausing the cleanup due to insufficient funds.

Here's the Kicker

TMI-2 also claims to have sent all of its damaged fuel to Idaho. The storage modules in Idaho, which were designed to operate for 50 years, began cracking ten years after installation. If all of the fuel is in Idaho, why does TMI-2 Solutions need to build an Independent Spent Fuel Storage Facility?

Answer: Both TMI-1 and TMI-2 receive millions of dollars to keep the waste on an island in the middle of a river that floods and empties into the largest estuary in the nation. Changing the name of the owner or giving TMI an alias does not change the fact that high-level radioactive waste will remain toxic for thousands of years.

When Is There Going to Be a Clean-Up Summit?

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." — William Faulkner