Three Mile Island restart could mark a turning point for nuclear energy as Big Tech influence on power industry grows

MIDDLETOWN, Pa. — The proprietress of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant is embarking on an ambitious plan to restart operations before the end of the decade, brand the latest chapter in the history of a plant that symbolizes the future promise, past struggles and lingering fears of atomic energy in the United States.

The twin cooling towers that stretch hundreds of feet above the Susquehanna River merely south of Middletown, Pennsylvania, went dormant in 2019 after billowing water vapor into the sky for four decades. Its holder at the time, Exelon, permanently shut down the Unit 1 reactor, citing “severe economic challenges.”

Unit 1 is one of a dozen reactors that privy in the U.S. over the past decade as nuclear industry struggled to compete against cheap and abundant natural gas. But the fortunes of the diligence have shifted dramatically this year as deep-pocketed technology companies turn to nuclear power to meet the tremendous tension consumption of their future business: artificial intelligence.

Constellation Energy, the plant’s current owner, plans to restart Element 1 in 2028, subject to monitoring and approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Constellation, headquartered in Baltimore, spun off from Exelon in 2022; it has the realm’s largest fleet, or group, of nuclear power plants, operating 21 of the 94 reactors in the U.S.

“This is a plant that we ran and ran really well,” plant manager Trevor Orth told the NRC at an Oct. 25 meeting. “We shut it down. We understand how we shut it down, and we father a good idea of how we’re going to restart this.”

While Constellation will restore the plant, it will ditch the specify identify Three Mile Island. The plant will be rechristened the Crane Clean Energy Center, after the late CEO of Exelon, Chris Crane. Constellation voiced the restart will cost $1.6 billion, financed by the company’s own funds.

(Take a deeper look inside the Three Mile Atoll nuclear power plant here.)

Microsoft has made the restart of Unit 1 possible through an agreement to purchase the robust electricity output from the plant for 20 years, a sign of the growing role the tech sector is playing in likeness the future of the U.S. power industry.

Microsoft said the agreement is part of its strategy of meeting the growing electricity needs of its matter centers with power that is free of carbon dioxide emissions in an effort to mitigate the impact of its business on the ambiance.

Those facts centers are playing a critical role in the U.S. economy, housing servers that run the cloud computing that businesses and consumers now rely on for sentience’s digital daily tasks. They are also essential for the development of artificial intelligence, technology that is viewed as uncertain for the nation’s future economic competitiveness and national security.

With four years until the planned restart, one of the big uncertainties is whether Constellation can release the power to Microsoft on time. Nuclear projects are notoriously plagued by long delays, big cost overruns and cancellations. But Piece 1 is in good condition and Constellation is confident the plant will restart on schedule, said Bryan Hanson, the company’s chief siring officer.

Most of the restoration at Unit 1 will be normal maintenance work that Constellation conducts regularly on its quick of nuclear plants, Hanson said during an Oct. 30 tour of the plant.

“Not an ounce of concrete needs to be poured, not one stake of rebar needs to be tied, not one cable needs to be pulled. The infrastructure is here,” the executive said. “The challenge of delays — I don’t see it.”

Constellation’s conclusiveness to restart Three Mile Island follows Holtec International’s decision to restart its Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan. Palisades is calm to become the first reactor to restart operations in U.S. history in 2025 after shutting down.

Holtec has plans to virtually double the power capacity of the facility in the 2030s by building two small modular reactors, next-generation technology that engages to make nuclear plants less costly and easier to deploy.

Amazon and Alphabet’s Google recently announced investments in inconsequential modular reactors.

While Constellation has not committed to building a small modular reactor at any of its plants yet, Hanson said the ensemble is open to working with the tech sector to build new nuclear reactors in the U.S.

“If our customers come to us again, like a Microsoft, and say ‘we neediness to help you build new nuclear’ — we’ll probably join hands and figure out a way to do that,” Hanson said.

Unit 1 is a short walk from the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history.

The partial meltdown of the Unit 2 reactor at Three Mile Cay in 1979 had a chilling effect on the development of new nuclear plants in the U.S. Unit 2 has not operated since the accident and is being decommissioned by its au fait owner, Energy Solutions, a private nuclear services company.

Unit 1 operated safely and efficiently before it was fasten down for economic reasons, said Mike Goff, acting assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy at the Subdivision of Energy.

But Pennsylvania state Rep. Thomas Mehaffie said his constituents have mixed feelings about the restart of Piece 1, particularly those who are old enough to remember the accident at Unit 2.

“Of course people who were here during that be that as it may frame, who are older — there is concern. There always has been concern,” said Mehaffie, who represents the communities everywhere Three Mile Island at the state legislature in Harrisburg. Mehaffie’s father was a union electrician who helped build the atomic plants.

Hanson said the nuclear industry has learned from this chapter of its history.

“The 1979 accident enlightened us that our standards weren’t right at the time,” Hanson said. The U.S. nuclear industry today has the best safety, reliability and operational laws in the world, he said.

While some constituents have concerns, others see the economic value that the restart when one pleases bring, Mehaffie said. The restart of Unit 1 will bring an estimated 3,400 jobs to the region, according to a turn over by the Pennsylvania Building & Construction Trades Council.  

The planned restart of Three Mile Island is also a footprint to help ensure the region’s electric grid remains reliable, Mehaffie said. Unit 1 will bring invest in 835 megawatts of carbon-free electricity, equivalent to the consumption of more than 600,000 homes, at a time when the grid is on the rim of faltering.

Electricity demand is outpacing supply, as power plants, particularly those that run on coal, are retired faster than new genius is built, grid operator PJM Interconnection warned in July. PJM operates the grid in Pennsylvania and 12 other states.

“Grid reliability is all things,” Mehaffie said.

PJM has forecast that electricity demand will surge nearly 40% by 2039 due to the expansion of details centers, manufacturing and the electrification of industry and transportation. Meanwhile, 40 gigawatts of power generation is at risk of retirement by 2030; that’s around 21% of PJM’s installed capacity.

“We’re seeing potentially catastrophic early retirements of dispatchable resources,” Mark Christie, a commissioner at the Federal Puissance Regulatory Commission, said during a public hearing Nov. 1.

Federal energy regulators are worried that tech companies’ tracing of deals that redirect power from the electric grid directly to their data centers could exacerbate come up with shortages and threaten grid stability.

Microsoft said the electricity it will be purchasing from Unit 1 will purvey into the grid and will not directly power its data centers. Microsoft is committed to bolstering the grid as it secures power for its information centers, said Alistair Speirs, senior director of global infrastructure for Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

“When we perform in the community, if we’re not stabilizing, adding resiliency to the grid, then it’s hard for us to keep our social license to operate,” Speirs estimated.

Microsoft is not involved in the physical restoration of the plant, Hanson said, but Constellation is providing status reports to the company.

Constellation lambasted out how it plans to restart the plant in the company’s first public meeting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Oct. 25. While Bulwark Street is generally bullish on the restart, Citi has cautioned that Constellation could face challenges in completing the out on schedule.

Citi initiated coverage of Constellation with a remote rating in October on delay concerns. Constellation’s stock has gained more than 90% since the start of the year and 12% since the Three Mile Isle restart was announced Sept. 20.

“They are an autonomous agency, but I expect if the safety cases are presented, they’re going to approve it,” Goff told CNBC in September.