Will the Three Mile Island nuclear plant reopen to power Microsoft’s AI needs?
The Three Mile Island atomic power plant might have been the site of the worst nuclear accident in US history, but it looks bound to be reopened to serve the needs of Microsoft’s AI technology.
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The Three Mile Island atomic power plant might have been the site of the worst nuclear accident in US history, but it looks bound to be reopened to serve the needs of Microsoft’s AI technology.
The plant – recently talked about in a shiny Netflix documentary – has been dormant since 2019 amid financial trouble. But now there’s a plan to bring it back to life to feed the growing energy needs of the Microsoft corporation – if, of course, a deal is approved by regulators.
Under the deal, announced by plant owner Constellation Energy, the site would come back online by 2028 and provide Microsoft with the energy equivalent it takes to power 800,000 homes, or 835 megawatts.
The reopened plant would also create 3,400 direct and indirect jobs and deliver more than $3 billion in state and federal taxes, the company said in a press release.
Microsoft would buy 100% of the plant’s power for 20 years as part of its goal to help match the power its hungry data centers in the area use with carbon-free energy.
“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.
Indeed, even though a nuclear plant in the US has never before come back into service after being decommissioned – what’s more, to serve a single commercial customer – the reality is that tech companies are desperate for reliable sources of energy.
Besides, most of them have been pledging left and right to fuel AI development with zero-emissions electricity. So far, it’s been a struggle – The Guardian reported last week that emissions from data centers are probably 662% higher than officially claimed.
Still, nuclear power is considered much cleaner because natural gas or coal aren’t required to produce electricity. This way, greenhouse gas emissions aren’t created.
Public support for the restart is strong in Pennsylvania. According to a recent statewide poll, conducted by Susquehanna Polling & Research, Pennsylvanians favor restarting the plant by a more than 2-1 margin.
But the plan to restart the plan, Constellation said, was dependent on federal subsidies in the form of tax breaks earmarked for nuclear power in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act – and that’s tricky because the energy from the plant would be produced for a single private company rather than entire communities.
“Microsoft says it will buy all of the nuclear electricity from Three Mile Island but it wants rate and taxpayers to pick up the tab to refurbish the plant,” Henry Sokolski, a former deputy for nonproliferation policy at the Pentagon, told The Washington Post.
Finally, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has never before authorized the reopening of any nuclear power plant. Its safety inspections could be extremely tough.
A bad omen recently emerged in Wisconsin, where the owners of a nuclear plant called Palisades are working to bring the dormant facility back to life. Last week, federal nuclear regulators disclosed that a “large number of steam generator tubes” could be faulty.