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Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station
Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania (via Getty Images)

America’s 54 nuclear power plants, mapped

Constellation Energy plans to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania

On Friday, Constellation Energy said that it has plans to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, the site of a nuclear meltdown that destroyed the second reactor at the power station in 1979.

The plant, which continued to operate safely for years after the accident, was eventually closed down in 2019 for economic reasons. But the conditions that led to its shutdown no longer hold, as demand for clean electricity soars thanks to growing demand for data centers. That has made boring old utilities stocks the best performers in the S&P 500 Index this year (chart), with Constellation Energy shares contributing significantly to that trend, having gained more than 120% in 2024.

But where are America’s nuclear power plants? We’ve mapped out the location of all 54, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.

Once operational, Three Mile Island would be the fifth nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. Only Illinois, which has 6 nuclear plants, would have more. The rest are predominantly in eastern states, although the country’s largest is Palo Verde Station in Arizona, which has a total capacity of 3,937 megawatts — enough to power some 4 million homes.

For decades, America’s nuclear output plateaued, with new reactors in Georgia the first to be built from scratch in the US for more than 30 years. If demand for electricity to power the AI wave continues to boom, they won’t be the last.

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Elon Musk says Tesla Robotaxis are operating without drivers, sending stock higher

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla’s Robotaxis are now operating in Austin without a safety monitor. Tesla has been testing driverless cars in the area for about a month, and Musk had previously said the company would remove safety drivers by the end of 2025.

It’s unclear how many exactly of the roughly 50 Robotaxis the company operates in the area don’t have drivers. Tesla is “starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors, and the ratio will increase over time,” Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of AI, posted shortly after Musk. Ethan McKenna, the person behind Robotaxi Tracker, estimates it’s two or three vehicles.

What is clear is that the move is good for Tesla’s stock, which is currently up 3.5%, extending its gains after Musk’s tweet. Morgan Stanley said yesterday that it considers the removal of safety drivers a “precursor to personal unsupervised FSD rollout.” Unsupervised Full Self-Driving is widely considered to be integral to the would-be autonomous company’s value proposition.

At the World Economic Forum earlier on Thursday, Musk said, “Self-driving cars is essentially a solved problem at this point.”

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Survey: CEOs and workers have wildly different thoughts on AI productivity gains

One of the main reasons companies are rushing to adopt AI is to give their workers the miraculous productivity boost that AI companies have been promising — and believe will quickly earn back their investment.

But now that companies have been using AI for a while, a growing perception gap is emerging between the C-suite and their employees.

The Wall Street Journal reported on new findings by research firm Section, which surveyed 5,000 white-collar workers from companies with more than 1,000 employees.

More than 70% of the corporate executives in the survey said they were “excited” by AI, and 19% of them said the tools have saved them more than 12 hours of work per week.

But nonmanagement workers had a very different take on AI. Almost 70% of this group said AI made them feel “anxious or overwhelmed,” and 40% said the tools saved them no time at all.

The Wall Street Journal reported on new findings by research firm Section, which surveyed 5,000 white-collar workers from companies with more than 1,000 employees.

More than 70% of the corporate executives in the survey said they were “excited” by AI, and 19% of them said the tools have saved them more than 12 hours of work per week.

But nonmanagement workers had a very different take on AI. Almost 70% of this group said AI made them feel “anxious or overwhelmed,” and 40% said the tools saved them no time at all.

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Tesla jumps as Musk says he expects Optimus sales next year, European and Chinese FSD approval next month

Tesla CEO Elon Musk now says he thinks the company’s Optimus robots will be for sale to the public “by the end of next year.”

According to Musk, “That’s when we are confident that there is very high reliability, very high safety, and the range of functionality is also very high.”

Like many of Musk’s other timelines, that’s later than he previously predicted. In 2024, for example, Musk said the AI robots would be for sale in 2025.

Speaking with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink on a panel today at the World Economic Forum, Musk said the robots are currently doing “simple tasks” in Tesla factories, but believes “they’ll be doing more complex tasks and be deployed in an industrial environment” by the end of this year, before going on sale to the public in 2027.

Musk forecasts a future with “billions” of AI robots that “saturate all human needs.”

On a separate topic, Musk was bullish on regulatory approval for what Tesla calls Full Self-Driving technology in markets outside the US. “We hope to get supervised Full Self-Driving approval in Europe, hopefully next month, and then maybe a similar timing for China,” he said. Musk has said in the past that the pending regulatory approval for FSD in Europe is a key reason why Tesla’s sales in the region have been tanking.

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Waymo is now offering autonomous rides in Miami

Google subsidiary Waymo announced Thursday that it’s officially open for autonomous ride-hailing in Miami, expanding the company’s coverage area to six US cities. The company will be “inviting new riders on a rolling basis” to take rides across its 60-square-mile service area, which includes the Design District, Wynwood, Brickell, and Coral Gables. Waymo said it plans to expand to Miami International Airport “soon.”

Competitor Tesla currently operates a ride-hailing service with a safety monitor in the vehicle in Austin and the Bay Area.

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Apple to promote Siri from assistant to chatbot

Bloomberg reports that Apple plans to transform its Siri assistant into a full-fledged chatbot similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

The chatbot would be integrated throughout the iPhone’s operating system rather than offered as a stand-alone app. It’s expected to arrive later this year and would be separate from more incremental, non-chatbot improvements to Siri rolling out in the coming months aimed at making the existing assistant more usable.

Both updates will be powered by Google’s AI models, Bloomberg reports, but the chatbot upgrade will be more advanced and akin to the much-lauded Gemini 3.

While the difference between an assistant and a chatbot may sound subtle, it represents a meaningful shift for Apple, which has long avoided a fully conversational interface and has lagged rivals that embraced one. Any new Siri chat capabilities could also eventually extend to other Apple devices under development, including wearables such as the pin Apple is developing.

Both updates will be powered by Google’s AI models, Bloomberg reports, but the chatbot upgrade will be more advanced and akin to the much-lauded Gemini 3.

While the difference between an assistant and a chatbot may sound subtle, it represents a meaningful shift for Apple, which has long avoided a fully conversational interface and has lagged rivals that embraced one. Any new Siri chat capabilities could also eventually extend to other Apple devices under development, including wearables such as the pin Apple is developing.

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