HARRISBURG, Pa. — With strong support in state government, the restart of a shuttered nuclear plant in central Pennsylvania is being proposed as a way to boost the burgeoning but electricity-needy artificial intelligence industry.
Constellation Energy, a publicly traded company based in Baltimore that owns the Three Mile Island Unit 1 plant south of Harrisburg, announced Friday that it signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Microsoft.
Using the same mechanism common to wind and solar projects, Microsoft’s contract would support the reconnection of the shuttered nuclear plant to the regional grid. Both the nuclear plant and Microsoft would be connected to that grid.
The proposal to restart the plant faces multiple regulatory approvals, including from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the regional grid operator, Valley Forge-based PJM Interconnection LLC.
Microsoft, which logged more than $64 billion in revenue in its most recent quarter, is one of the biggest names in the rapidly evolving AI industry, which demands massive amounts of electricity. The Three Mile Island Unit 1 reactor was shut down five years ago because its owner at the time, Exelon, found it too costly to operate.
The nearby Unit 2 reactor was the site of the nation’s worst nuclear accident in 1979. The name “Three Mile Island” still carries memories for many of the fear and uncertainty that accompanied the accident that destroyed the reactor and released a small amount of radiation.
The proposal to restart Unit 1 had immediate backing in state government in Harrisburg. Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said the nuclear industry plays a critical role in providing carbon-free energy, and the proposed restart would be carried out “under the careful watch of state and federal authorities” and lead to thousands of jobs.
State Rep. Thomas Mehaffie, a Dauphin County Republican whose district includes the plant, previously sponsored a bill in the legislature that would have kept the Unit 1 reactor open. The bill failed to garner enough support to move forward.
He called the new proposal “fantastic.” A restart, he said, would generate many jobs in his district and the project would be fully funded by Microsoft and Constellation. Constellation spokesman Paul Adams said the company plans to invest $1.6 billion to restore the plant.
The Unit 1 plant is “completely independent” from the ruined Unit 2 plant, Mehaffie said.
Getting approval from the NRC for a restart might be the most significant future step in the process, he said.
Mehaffie said he did not believe any votes by the legislature would be required before the proposed restart, but regulatory requirements — like getting state approval to use water from the Susquehanna River to operate the reactor — would have to be met.
State Rep. Rob Matzie, D-Beaver, chairman of the House Consumer Protection, Technology and Utilities Committee said the proposed restart “gives us more capacity and more flexibility to face demands — it’s not just clean power generation, it’s billions in tax revenue and thousands of good-paying jobs to boot, with even more jobs created in supporting industries.”
NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan confirmed that the agency has been aware of the potential for a restart at TMI but has not yet received any licensing materials. It is currently in the process of reviewing the first such application for a restart of nuclear plant in the U.S. which could pave the way for what happens at TMI.
Last year, Holtec International submitted an application to the NRC to restart the 800-megawatt Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan, which shut down in May 2022. Holtec had originally bought the property to decommission it, but last year the company reversed course, boosted by more than $300 million in state and federal funding and the expectation of a large Department of Energy loan. The $1.5 billion loan was greenlit in August.
Holtec has said it expects to restart that plant by the end of 2025, pending the NRC’s review. It would be the first time a shuttered nuclear plant is brought back to life in the U.S.
Three Mile Island would be the second, if Constellation’s plans pan out.
But it won’t be the first to link its fate to a major data center. In March, Amazon inked a deal with Talen Energy, the operator of the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station in Luzerne County, in which a portion of the nuclear plant’s power will be routed to Amazon’s data center nearby.
Unlike what is being proposed with TMI, Amazon will actually receive electrons directly from Talen’s facility. Talen developed the data center campus and sold it to Amazon for $650 million.
Similar arrangements for a direct connection behind the meter have been floated at other nuclear plants, including at Beaver Valley nuclear power station in Beaver County.
Political leaders are under pressure to accommodate the growing electricity needs of AI computing.
Eric Epstein, coordinator of the government accountability watchdog group Rock the Capital and a longtime critic of how government has handled TMI, blasted the proposal.
The plant was shut down previously, he said, because it could not be run in a financially competitive manner. The new proposal, he said, is “government putting their thumb on the scale to support nuclear” in a way that will distort the marketplace and hurt consumers.
Among other criticisms, he said a restart of Unit 1 would further delay the long-awaited final cleanup at Unit 2.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said Wednesday in Pittsburgh that tech giants are currently in an “uncomfortable” place balancing carbon neutrality goals with the immense power needs of AI computing.
“In the short term, it is challenging,” he told an audience at Carnegie Mellon University. “In the medium to long term, I’m optimistic, because I think it’s also bringing a lot of capital investment to developing new sources of energy.”
Constellation referred to the Unit 1 reactor under a new name, Crane Clean Energy Center, and said a timetable for work at the plant could lead to it being online in 2028. The company said the plant “operated at industry-leading levels of safety and reliability for decades” before it was shut down.
“Powering industries critical to our nation’s global economic and technological competitiveness, including data centers, requires an abundance of energy that is carbon-free and reliable every hour of every day, and nuclear plants are the only energy sources that can consistently deliver on that promise,” said Joe Dominguez, president and CEO of Constellation.
“Before it was prematurely shuttered due to poor economics, this plant was among the safest and most reliable nuclear plants on the grid.”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporters Evan Robinson-Johnson and Anya Litvak contributed to this article. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.
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