A mothballed nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania may soon be restarted to help meet some of Microsoft’s growing energy needs.
On Friday, Constellation Energy and Microsoft announced they had signed a 20-year power purchase agreement that will see one of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant’s reactors restarted to exclusively power the tech giant’s massive data centers that help support artificial intelligence.
Neither Constellation Energy nor Microsoft disclosed financial terms of the deal.
Reactivating Three Mile Island Unit 1, which was shut down in 2019, requires approval from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. If approved, the plant is scheduled to restart in 2028.
The first nuclear power generation
“Powering industries that are critical to our global economic and technological competitiveness, like data centers, requires carbon-free, reliable and abundant energy every hour of every day, and nuclear plants are the only energy source that can consistently deliver that,” Constellation Energy President and CEO Joe Dominguez said in a statement Friday.
When Three Mile Island closed for economic reasons in 2019, it had a generating capacity of 837 megawatts, enough to power more than 800,000 homes. Constellation Energy says that if it were to reopen, the plant would once again generate more than 800 megawatts of electricity for Microsoft, potentially boosting Pennsylvania’s GDP by $16 billion, and creating 3,400 direct and indirect jobs.
No decommissioned nuclear power plant has ever been reopened in the United States, but if Three Mile Island were to restart, it could be the first.
What happened at Three Mile Island
Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, is best known as the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. A mechanical failure caused a partial meltdown of the facility’s No. 2 reactor in 1979, and it has remained shut down ever since. Although the amount of radiation released during the accident was ultimately relatively small, the incident is widely seen as having caused public distrust in the nuclear industry.
According to a press release from Constellation Energy, a statewide poll conducted by Susquehanna Polling and Research found that state residents support restarting the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant by a margin of more than two to one.
Recent demand for electricity from technology companies, much of which is driven by the vast energy resources needed for data centers supporting artificial intelligence, has led companies to explore nuclear power options.
Earlier this year, Amazon Web Services announced plans to buy power for one of its data centers from Talen Energy’s Susquehanna nuclear power plant, also in Pennsylvania.
“This agreement marks a major milestone in our efforts to help decarbonize the electric grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative,” Bobby Hollis, Microsoft’s vice president of energy, said Friday. “Microsoft continues to work with energy providers to develop carbon-free energy sources to meet the capacity and reliability needs of the electric grid.”
Max Hauptman is a trends reporter for USA Today. He can be reached at MHauptman@gannett.com.