HARRISBURG, Pa. — The owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant said Friday that it plans to restart the reactor under a 20-year agreement that calls for tech giant Microsoft to buy the power to supply its data centers with carbon-free energy.
The announcement by Constellation Energy comes five years after its then-parent company Exelon shut down the plant, saying it was losing money and that Pennsylvania lawmakers had refused to subsidize it.
The plan to restart Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 comes amid something of a renaissance for nuclear power, as policymakers are increasingly looking to it to bail out a fraying electric power supply, help avoid the worst effects of climate change and meet rising power demand driven by data centers.
The plant, on an island in the Susquehanna River just outside Harrisburg, was the site of the nation’s worst commercial nuclear power accident, in 1979. The accident destroyed one reactor, Unit 2, and left the plant with one functioning reactor, Unit 1.
Buying the power is designed to help Microsoft meet its commitment to be “carbon negative” by 2030.
Microsoft wouldn’t say which of its data centers will be powered by the nuclear plant, but the mid-Atlantic electricity grid spans from Virginia, a data center hub for Microsoft and other tech giants, to Ohio, where Microsoft has plans for a new data center complex outside Columbus.
Constellation said it hopes to bring Unit 1 online in 2028. Restarting the reactor will require approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as well as permits from state and local agencies, Constellation said.
To restart Unit 1, Constellation will spend $1.6 billion to restore equipment including the turbine, generator, main power transformer and cooling and control systems. It is not currently seeking state or federal subsidies to help, it said.
Microsoft and Constellation didn’t release terms of their agreement.
Jacopo Buongiorno, a nuclear science and engineering professor and director of MIT’s Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems, said Microsoft will likely pay above market price for electricity that is both carbon-free and reliable.
Restarting the plant is realistic, but not easy, Buongiorno said.
“It all depends on what’s the state of the components, the systems,” Buongiorno said.
The process will go fairly smoothly if they were maintained well while it was shut down, Buongiorno said. A Constellation spokesperson said the plant itself is in excellent…
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