Microsoft Explores Reviving Three Mile Island for AI Data Center Power

Chatbots Are Saving America's Nuclear Industry

Microsoft's AI energy needs are bringing the infamous Three Mile Island power plant back from the dead. When the Three Mile Island power plant in Pennsylvania was decommissioned in 2019, it heralded the symbolic end of America's nuclear industry. In 1979, the facility was the site of the worst nuclear disaster in the nation's history: a partial reactor meltdown that didn't release enough radiation to cause detectable harm to people nearby, but still turned Americans against nuclear power and prompted a host of regulations that functionally killed most nuclear build-out for decades. Many existing plants stayed online, but 40 years later, Three Mile Island joined a wave of facilities that shut down because of financial hurdles and competition from cheap natural gas, closures that cast doubt over the future of nuclear power in the United States. Now Three Mile Island is coming back, this time as part of efforts to meet the enormous electricity demands of generative AI. This morning, the plant's owner, Constellation Energy, announced that it is reopening the facility. Microsoft, which is seeking clean energy to power its data centers, has agreed to buy power from the reopened plant for 20 years. "This was the site of the industry's greatest failure, and now it can be a place of rebirth," Joseph Dominguez, the CEO of Constellation, told The New York Times. Three Mile Island plans to officially reopen in 2028, after some $1.6 billion worth of refurbishing and under a new name, the Crane Clean Energy Center. Nuclear power and chatbots might be a perfect match. The technology underlying ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, and Microsoft Copilot is extraordinarily power-hungry. These programs feed on more data, are more complex, and use more electricity-intensive hardware than traditional web algorithms. An AI-powered web search, for instance, could require five to 10 times more electricity than a traditional query. The world is already struggling to generate enough electricity to meet the internet's growing power demand, which AI is rapidly accelerating. Large grids and electric utilities across the U.S. are warning that AI is straining their capacity, and some of the world's biggest data-center hubs -- including Sweden, Singapore, Amsterdam, and exurban Washington, D.C. -- are struggling to find power to run new constructions. The exact amount of power that AI will demand within a few years' time is hard to predict, but it will likely be enormous: Estimates range from the equivalent of Argentina's annual power usage to that of India. That's a big problem for the tech companies building these data centers, many of which have made substantial commitments to cut their emissions. Microsoft, for instance, has pledged to be "carbon negative," or to remove more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits, by 2030. The Three Mile Island deal is part of that accounting. Instead of directly drawing power from the reopened plant, Microsoft will buy enough carbon-free nuclear energy from the facility to match the power that several of its data centers draw from the grid, a company spokesperson told me over email. Such electricity-matching schemes, known as "power purchase agreements," are necessary because the construction of solar, wind, and geothermal plants is not keeping pace with the demands of AI. Even if it was, these clean electricity sources might pose a more fundamental problem for tech companies: Data centers' new, massive power demands need to be met at all hours of the day, not just when the sun shines or the wind blows. To fill the gap, many tech companies are turning to a readily available source of abundant, reliable electricity: burning fossil fuels. In the U.S., plans to wind down coal-fired power plants are being delayed in West Virginia, Maryland, Missouri, and elsewhere to power data centers. That Microsoft will use the refurbished Three Mile Island to offset, rather than supply, its data centers' electricity consumption suggests that the facilities will likely continue to rely on fossil fuels for some time, too. Burning fossil fuels to power AI means the new tech boom might even threaten to delay the green-energy transition. Still, investing in nuclear energy to match data centers' power usage also brings new sources of clean, reliable electricity to the power grid. Splitting apart atoms provides a carbon-free way to generate tremendous amounts of electricity day and night. Bobby Hollis, Microsoft's vice president for energy, told Bloomberg that this is a key upside to the Three Mile Island revival: "We run around the clock. They run around the clock." Microsoft is working to build a carbon-free grid to power all of its operations, data centers included. Nuclear plants will be an important component that provides what the company has elsewhere called "firm electricity" to fill in the gaps for less steady sources of clean energy, including solar and wind. It's not just Microsoft that is turning to nuclear. Earlier this year, Amazon purchased a Pennsylvania data center that is entirely nuclear-powered, and the company is reportedly in talks to secure nuclear power along the East Coast from another Constellation nuclear plant. Google, Microsoft, and several other companies have invested or agreed to buy electricity in start-ups promising nuclear fusion -- an even more powerful and cleaner form of nuclear power that remains highly experimental -- as have billionaires including Sam Altman, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos. Nuclear energy might not just be a good option for powering the AI boom. It might be the only clean option able to meet demand until there is a substantial build-out of solar and wind energy. A handful of other, retired reactors could come back online, and new ones may be built as well. Just yesterday, Jennifer Granholm, the secretary of energy, told my colleague Vann R. Newkirk II that building small nuclear reactors could become an important way to supply nonstop clean energy to data centers. Whether such construction will be fast and plentiful enough to satisfy the growing power demand is unclear. But it must be, for the generative-AI revolution to really take off. Before chatbots can finish remaking the internet, they might need to first reshape America's physical infrastructure.

AI may breathe new life into Three Mile Island to supply power to Microsoft's data centers

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 condition. The closest example of restarting a nuclear plant is underway in Michigan, Buongiorno said. There, the federal government has promised a $1.5 billion loan to restart the Palisades nuclear plant, shut down in 2022. The business model of the Constellation-Microsoft agreement makes sense for both sides, Buongiorno said. Plus, it is cheaper to restart a nuclear power plant than build one from scratch, he said. Already intact are transmission lines, cooling towers, the control buildings and concrete containment structures, he said. Constellation's announcement comes after a wave of coal-fired and nuclear power plants have shut down in the past decade as competition from cheap natural gas flooded power markets. That has elicited warnings that the US is facing an electric reliability crisis. Meanwhile, demand is fast-growing from data centers run by tech giants like Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Google to provide cloud computing and digital services such as artificial intelligence systems. In the US, growth in electricity demand is concentrated in states - primarily Virginia and Texas - that are seeing the rapid development of large-scale data centers, the US Energy Information Administration said. The data centers' share of US electricity use in the United States is around 4% currently, with some projections expecting that to double by 2030. The Constellation-Microsoft agreement comes amid a push by the Biden administration, states and utilities to reconsider using nuclear power to try to limit plant-warming greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector. Last year, Georgia Power began producing electricity from the first American nuclear reactor to be built in decades, after the accident at Three Mile Island froze interest in building new ones. Before it was shut down in 2019, Three Mile Island's Unit 1 had a generating capacity of 837 megawatts, which is enough to power more than 800,000 homes, Constellation said. The destroyed Unit 2 is sealed, and its twin cooling towers remain standing. Its core was shipped years ago to the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory. What is left inside the containment building remains highly radioactive and encased in concrete. The late 2022 debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT - built with help from Microsoft's data centers - ignited worldwide demand for chatbots and other generative AI products that typically require large amounts of computing power to train and operate. Google and Microsoft both acknowledged this year that AI's electricity needs are making it harder for them to meet the ambitious climate targets they set before the AI boom. "Microsoft, above and beyond their own products, are also providing the compute for OpenAI, which is growing and expanding very ambitiously," said Sasha Luccioni, a researcher at AI company Hugging Face who has called attention to AI's carbon footprint. "They have to scramble to get all the energy that they can in order to be able to fuel that growth."

The AI boom may give Three Mile Island a new life supplying power to Microsoft's data centres

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 centres 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 subsidise 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 centres. 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 centres will be powered by the nuclear plant, but the mid-Atlantic electricity grid spans from Virginia, a data centre hub for Microsoft and other tech giants, to Ohio, where Microsoft has plans for a new data centre 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. Google says it will rethink its plans for a big data centre in Chile over water worries 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 condition. The closest example of restarting a nuclear plant is underway in Michigan, Buongiorno said. There, the federal government has promised a $1.5 billion loan to restart the Palisades nuclear plant, shut down in 2022. The business model of the Constellation-Microsoft agreement makes sense for both sides, Buongiorno said. Plus, it is cheaper to restart a nuclear power plant than build one from scratch, he said. Already intact are transmission lines, cooling towers, the control buildings and concrete containment structures, he said. Constellation's announcement comes after a wave of coal-fired and nuclear power plants have shut down in the past decade as competition from cheap natural gas flooded power markets. That has elicited warnings that the U.S. is facing an electric reliability crisis. Meanwhile, demand is fast-growing from data centers run by tech giants like Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Google to provide cloud computing and digital services such as artificial intelligence systems. In the U.S., growth in electricity demand is concentrated in states -- primarily Virginia and Texas -- that are seeing the rapid development of large-scale data centers, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said. The data centres' share of U.S. electricity use in the United States is around 4% currently, with some projections expecting that to double by 2030. The Constellation-Microsoft agreement comes amid a push by the Biden administration, states and utilities to reconsider using nuclear power to try to limit plant-warming greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector. Last year, Georgia Power began producing electricity from the first American nuclear reactor to be built in decades, after the accident at Three Mile Island froze interest in building new ones. Before it was shut down in 2019, Three Mile Island's Unit 1 had a generating capacity of 837 megawatts, which is enough to power more than 800,000 homes, Constellation said. The destroyed Unit 2 is sealed, and its twin cooling towers remain standing. Its core was shipped years ago to the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory. What is left inside the containment building remains highly radioactive and encased in concrete. Microsoft and BlackRock to launch $30 billion fund for AI infrastructure The late 2022 debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT -- built with help from Microsoft's data centres -- ignited worldwide demand for chatbots and other generative AI products that typically require large amounts of computing power to train and operate. Google and Microsoft both acknowledged this year that AI's electricity needs are making it harder for them to meet the ambitious climate targets they set before the AI boom. "Microsoft, above and beyond their own products, are also providing the compute for OpenAI, which is growing and expanding very ambitiously," said Sasha Luccioni, a researcher at AI company Hugging Face who has called attention to AI's carbon footprint. "They have to scramble to get all the energy that they can in order to be able to fuel that growth." Published - September 21, 2024 08:57 am IST Read Comments

Microsoft Working to Reopen Three Mile Island to Power Huge AI Datacenters

Microsoft is backing a deal to re-open the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, The Washington Post reports, as part of its plan to meet the staggering energy demands of its AI infrastructure. The Three Mile Island facility is infamous for being the site of the worst nuclear accident in US history decades ago. Constellation Energy, which owns the plant, officially shut it down in 2019. But now, the company is investing $1.6 billion to bring it back into operation by 2028, which it expects to do with the help of federal tax breaks and an irresistible offer from a tech monolith. As part of the deal, Microsoft will buy all the nuclear energy produced by the plant for twenty years. The exact sum hasn't been disclosed, but you can expect it to be enormous. This is unprecedented in many regards. It's the first time that Microsoft has secured a source of totally nuclear power, Bloomberg reported -- and if given the final go-ahead by regulators, it will also be the first time that a decommissioned nuclear plant has been brought back into service in the US, according to WaPo. The fact that an entire nuclear plant's output is being allocated to a single customer is also novel, the newspaper noted, in the clearest sign yet of a surge of interest in nuclear energy by a ravenous tech industry. "This plant never should have been allowed to shut down," Constellation CEO Joseph Dominguez toldWaPo. "It will produce as much clean energy as all of the renewables [wind and solar] built in Pennsylvania over the last 30 years." Three Mile Island became synonymous with public distrust in nuclear power after one of its two reactors underwent a partial meltdown in 1979, years before the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Constellation's plan is to re-kindle the site's other reactor unit, which was unaffected by the accident and continued to produce power without incident for decades. It was closed in 2019 because its owners judged that it couldn't economically compete with cheap natural gas -- a feeling that saw many other nuclear plants shut down over the past twenty years. Constellation will be using its own money to fund the four-year plan to bring Three Mile Island back online, but the plan hinges on tax breaks provided by the 2022 Inflation Recovery Act. For Microsoft, bringing the plant into the fold is seen as an essential step towards achieving its goal of being carbon negative by 2030. Nuclear power produces only minimal greenhouse gas emissions associated with mining and refining its fuel sources, but it does create radioactive waste, the disposal of which remains controversial. But there's significant work ahead. Constellation still needs approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has never greenlit this kind of arrangement before. Big tech intervention could be a lifeline for the struggling nuclear industry. Nuclear power advocates, though, would probably have preferred if this flagpole move wasn't attached to the site of an infamous meltdown -- nor would it be ideal if a resurgence of nuclear power is totally subsumed by the interests of AI.

Microsoft deal would reopen Three Mile Island nuclear plant to power AI

The owner of the shuttered Pennsylvania plant plans to bring it online by 2028, with the tech giant buying all the power it produces. Pennsylvania's dormant Three Mile Island nuclear plant would be brought back to life to feed the voracious energy needs of Microsoft under an unprecedented deal announced Friday in which the tech giant would buy 100 percent of its power for 20 years. The restart of Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, would mark a bold advance in the tech industry's quest to find enough electric power to support its boom in artificial intelligence. The plant, which Pennsylvanians thought had closed for good in 2019 amid financial strain, would come back online by 2028 under the agreement, according to plant owner Constellation Energy. If approved by regulators, Three Mile Island would provide Microsoft with the energy equivalent it takes to power 800,000 homes, or 835 megawatts. Never before has a U.S. nuclear plant come back into service after being decommissioned, and never before has all of a single commercial nuclear power plant's output been allocated to a single customer. But the economics of both the power and computing industries are changing rapidly. Tech companies are scouring the nation for power that is both reliable and helps them meet their pledge to fuel AI development with zero emissions electricity -- driving a nuclear power revival. "The energy industry cannot be the reason China or Russia beats us in AI," said Joseph Dominguez, chief executive of Constellation. "This plant never should have been allowed to shut down, ... It will produce as much clean energy as all of the renewables [wind and solar] built in Pennsylvania over the last 30 years." The four-year restart plan would cost Constellation about $1.6 billion, he said, and is dependent on federal subsidies in the form of tax breaks earmarked for nuclear power in the 2022 Inflation Recovery Act. Constellation will also need to clear steep regulatory hurdles, including intensive safety inspections from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has never before authorized the reopening of a plant. The deal also raises thorny questions about the federal tax breaks, as the energy from the plant would all be produced for a single private company rather than a utility serving entire communities. A partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979 sent the nation into a panic and the nuclear industry reeling. The unit that Constellation plans to fire back up sits adjacent to the one that malfunctioned 45 years ago. Constellation and Microsoft conceived the novel deal to solve a deepening energy problem. The sprawling data centers Microsoft and other digital giants need have become so big and energy-intensive that they are straining existing power supplies across the nation. Constellation disclosed months ago that it was exploring options for restarting Three Mile Island, which sits along the Susquehanna River. The news was met with mixed reactions. Nuclear safety advocates expressed alarm. But some community leaders welcomed the development, seeing potential to revive an economic anchor in a region beset with financial hardship. A study funded by the Pennsylvania Building & Construction Trades Council says a reopening would create 3,400 jobs at the plant and in businesses serving it and its workers, and generate $3 billion in state and federal taxes. The tax breaks in the Inflation Reduction Act are crucial to making the deal economically feasible, according to Constellation. They provide a credit for every megawatt hour of nuclear energy produced. Constellation declined to provide details about its contract with Microsoft or disclose the value of tax credits. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has said in the past that federal subsidies could cut the cost of bringing a new plant on line by as much as half. The announcement of the Microsoft deal follows an agreement Amazon reached with Talen Energy to purchase power produced by the financially troubled Susquehanna nuclear plant for a planned data center campus in Pennsylvania. That arrangement is running into snags with regulators, as regional utilities express concern that their ratepayers will be saddled with the bill for the power grid updates needed. Amazon's plan also raised concerns among clean-energy advocates that tech companies are shifting from driving the transition to clean energy to elbowing others out of it by claiming such large amounts of available clean electricity for themselves. Dominguez argues that the Three Mile Island case is an example of how Silicon Valley's outside-the-box thinking will help stabilize the power grid for everyone. The power from the plant will not go directly to Microsoft facilities but into the overtaxed regional power grid that serves 65 million people across 13 states and the District of Columbia, called the PJM Interconnection. Nuclear power is considered "clean" because unlike burning natural gas or coal to produce electricity, it does not create greenhouse gas emissions. The plants are expensive to build or restart, and industry still has no long-term solution for spent but highly radioactive uranium fuel rods. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," said a statement from Bobby Hollis, vice president of energy at Microsoft. Dominguez said other ratepayers on the PJM grid will not be expected to shoulder any of the costs, nor will Constellation be seeking special subsidies from the state of Pennsylvania. Constellation has already been doing extensive testing at Three Mile Island. It says most of its components are ready to operate again. "The plant is in extraordinary shape," Dominguez said. Three Mile Island is not the only nuclear plant the industry is eager to revive. The owners of a plant in Western Michigan called Palisades are also working to bring that dormant facility back. That project was approved for a $1.5 billion federal loan guarantee. The plant owner, Holtec, says it hopes to feed nuclear energy from Palisades into the region's power grid by late next year. The Palisades effort came about at the urging of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmore (D), as her state struggles to both meet its climate goals and generate adequate energy. The plant was destined for permanent closure when Holtec acquired it in 2022. The company had planned to decommission the facility but changed course after conversations with the governor. On Wednesday, though, that plan was dealt a setback when federal nuclear regulators disclosed "a large number of steam generator tubes" could be faulty and need further inspection. Holtec said the finding does not alter its plans. But some nuclear safety advocates argue the company's push to quickly reopen the plant puts the public at risk. The huge cost and regulatory headaches associated with nuclear power are not deterring the tech industry from betting on it. In a remarkable turn of fortune for an industry that just a few years ago was struggling to stay competitive and focused mostly on closing plants, it now finds itself in expansion mode. Beyond seeking contracts for power from existing plants, tech companies are also bullish on next generation nuclear technologies. Several are investigating the potential of locating their facilities near small modular nuclear reactors that could feed them power directly. Such technology is in its infancy and has not yet been approved by regulators. That isn't stopping a company chaired by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates from doubling down on it. The firm, called Terra Power, this year began construction at what it plans to be a small reactor site in site in Wyoming. Microsoft is also pursuing power from nuclear fusion, a potentially abundant, cheap and clean form of electricity that scientists have been trying to develop for decades -- and most say is still a decade or more away from generating electricity. Microsoft has signed a contract to purchase fusion energy from a start-up that claims it can deliver it by 2028.

Microsoft taps Three Mile Island nuclear plant to power AI | TechCrunch

The data centers that train all the large language models behind AI consume unimaginable amounts of energy, and the stakes are high for big tech companies to ensure they have enough power to run those plants. That's why Microsoft is now throwing its weight behind nuclear power. The tech giant on Friday signed a major deal with nuclear plant owner Constellation Energy to restart its closed Three Mile Island plant by 2028 to power its data centers. The Constellation plant, infamous for melting down in 1979, closed in 2019 after failing to garner enough demand for its energy amid competition with cheaper alternatives like natural gas, and solar and wind power. Constellation said it plans to spend $1.6 billion to revive its reactor, pending regulatory approval. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Microsoft agreed to purchase all of the power from the reactor over the next 20 years, a Constellation spokesperson told TechCrunch. Once restored, the reactor promises a capacity of 835 megawatts. The new plant will also be renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center (CCEC) after Constellation's former CEO, Chris Crane, who died in April. An economic report commissioned by the Pennsylvania Building & Construction Trades Council has found that the plant will create 3,400 direct and indirect jobs, add $16 billion to the state's GDP, and generate more than $3 billion in state and federal taxes. "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, in a statement. Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Microsoft isn't the only tech company today turning to nuclear energy to power AI data centers. OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman has called for an energy breakthrough in the form of nuclear power, and Amazon in March bought a nuclear-powered data center in Pennsylvania for $650 million. Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet have all said they plan to run data centers entirely on green energy. Microsoft's goal is to do so by 2030, but in May, the company admitted its AI push is putting that goal into jeopardy. In June, Bloomberg reported that big tech's upcoming data centers promise to consume a combined 508 terawatt hours of electricity per year if they run constantly. That would be more than the total electricity produced in Australia in a year. The demand for clean electricity to power not just data centers but also electric vehicles, factories and more has spurred a renaissance of sorts around nuclear power. Investors are increasingly bullish on nuclear fusion startups, which have raised $7.1 billion to date, since it represents a cleaner and more powerful future for nuclear power. It uses hydrogen as fuel, whereas nuclear power plants and their fission process rely on hard-to-come-by elements like uranium and plutonium.

Re-opened Three Mile Island will power AI data centers under new deal

Microsoft would claim all of the nuclear plant's power generation for at least 20 years. Microsoft and Constellation Energy have announced a deal that would re-open Pennsylvania's shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant. The agreement would let Microsoft purchase the entirety of the plant's roughly 835 megawatts of energy generation -- enough to power approximately 800,000 homes -- for a span of 20 years starting in 2028, pending regulatory approval. The actual electricity from the Three Mile Island plant -- which would be renamed Crane Clean Energy Center -- wouldn't be earmarked for any specific use and would go to local interconnections rather than directly to Microsoft facilities. But the deal comes as Microsoft and large swaths of the tech industry seek new energy sources for data centers that power everything from generative AI models to cloud computing and streaming services. A new nuclear dawn? Further ReadingPennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant rose to infamy in 1979 when a partial meltdown in Unit 2 helped ignite panic over nuclear safety across the country. The new Microsoft deal would re-open the adjacent Unit 1, which was shuttered in 2019 "due to poor economics," according to Constellation. If and when the plant reaches its planned 2028 re-opening, it would mark the first time a shuttered nuclear plant has been put back into service. Constellation said it plans to spend $1.6 billion revitalizing the plant, including inspections and replacements for the reactor's turbines and cooling systems. Tax credits and other federal subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act would also help fund the re-opening. Last year, Microsoft posted a job listing looking for a new program manager to "lead project initiatives for all aspects of nuclear energy infrastructure for global growth." Constellation's efforts to restart Three Mile Island were first disclosed months ago. Despite a reputation fostered by the Three Mile Island meltdown and other accidents, nuclear energy as a whole is responsible for many fewer deaths than most other forms of power generation, especially when the environmental impacts of air pollution are taken into account. But the nuclear industry faces massive cleanup costs when accidents do happen and still grapples with what to do about nuclear waste that has to be safely sequestered for thousands of years to avoid potential harm to humans. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," Microsoft VP of Energy Bobby Hollis said in a statement. "Microsoft continues to collaborate with energy providers to develop carbon-free energy sources to help meet the grids' capacity and reliability needs." News of the deal comes months after Amazon purchased a $650 million data center powered by the nearby Susquehanna nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Nuclear-powered AI? Industry-wide, data centers demanded upwards of 350 TWh of power in 2024, according to a Bloomberg analysis, up substantially from about 100 TWh in 2012. An IEA report expects those data center power needs to continue to rise in the near future, hitting the 620 to 1,050 TWh range by 2026. Further ReadingThe rise of generative AI models in recent years represents a small but quickly growing portion of that data center energy demand. One study projected total AI energy use at between 85 and 134 TWh by 2027, a range that's roughly in line with the power needs of the PC gaming industry. "The energy industry cannot be the reason China or Russia beats us in AI," Constellation chief executive Joseph Dominguez told The Washington Post. "This plant never should have been allowed to shut down... It will produce as much clean energy as all of the renewables [wind and solar] built in Pennsylvania over the last 30 years."

Massive AI energy demand is bringing Three Mile Island back from the dead

Microsoft will be the sole purchaser of energy generated from the refurbished site. Power-hungry generative AI models are quickly making Big Tech sizable energy requirements even more demanding and forcing companies to seek out energy from unlikely places. While Meta and Google are exploring modern geothermal tech and other newer experimental energy sources, Microsoft is stepping back in time. This week, the company signed a 20-year-deal to source energy from the storied Three Mile Island nuclear facility in Pennsylvania, a site once known for the worst reactor accident in US history. If successful, the effort would breathe life back into the iconic symbol of US nuclear power and potentially provide Microsoft with around 800 megawatts of clean-burning energy to help satiate its growing energy appetite. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," Microsoft VP of Energy Bobby Hollis, said in a statement. Three Mile Island, located around two hours west of Philadelphia, altered the trajectory of US nuclear power adoption 45 years ago. Before sunrise on March 28, 1979, the facility's Unit 2 reactors partially melted down, releasing some radioactive gas into the air sending the nearby area into a panic. While there were no recorded deaths following the meltdown, the incident dealt lasting damage to the public perception of nuclear energy. Now, many environmental scientists and researchers argue the backlash may have been overblown. Nuclear is considered a clean energy source since it does not create greenhouse gas emissions (though it does create nuclear waste). It's also more dependable than renewables like solar and wind. That always-on availability is attractive for tech companies like Microsoft that will need all the power they can muster to keep their data center running and properly cooled. The nuclear facility at Three Mile Island continued to operate for decades after the 1979 incident. It finally went offline five years ago, not for any safety issue, but due to economic headwinds. Electricity provider Constellation spent the past 20 months inspecting the dormant facility to determine whether or not they could make it a viable energy producer once more. They believe they can, but at some cost. In a press release, Constellation said it plans to spend $1.6 billion of its own funds to revive the plant, with investments going towards replacing Unit 1's main transformer as well as restoring turbines and cooling systems. The Washington Post notes this would mark the first time a US nuclear power plant has come back online after being decommissioned and the first time a single customer would purchase the entirety of its energy output. When all is said and done, Constellation believes the new and improved Three Mile Island facility could employ 600 on-site workers and generate 835 megawatts of power fed into the grid. The New York Times estimates that's roughly enough energy to power 700,000 homes. Constellation also plans to rename the facility Crane Clean Energy Center after the company's late CEO Chris Crane. The plant could start operating as early as 2028, pending regulatory approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "Before it was prematurely shuttered due to poor economics, this plant was among the safest and most reliable nuclear plants on the grid, and we look forward to bringing it back with a new name and a renewed mission to serve as an economic engine for Pennsylvania," Constellation president and CEO Joe Dominguez said in a statement. For Mirosoft, the agreement presents an opportunity for the company to tap into a new energy source to help it meet its growing electric demands. Like some of its competitors, Microsoft has pledged to achieve zero canon emissions and be carbon negative by 2030. The race for generative AI supremacy, however, puts that goal in jeopardy. A Goldman Sachs forecast recently estimates one ChatGPT query requires around 10 times as much electricity as a Google search. Overall, energy needed to power emerging generative AI image and video models like OpenAI's Sora, according to that same report "have no precedent." Some reports suggest the massive data centers housing these AI models could account for over 9% the country's overall energy demand by 2030. Experts speaking previously with Popular Science doubt existing renewable sources like solar and wind can generate enough power fast enough to meet all that new demand. The Goldman Sachs forecast mentioned above estimates that, at current energy projections, fossil fuel sources might make up more than half (60%) of energy used to meet coming data center demands. That dirty energy dilemma has caused tech companies to get creative. Both Meta and Google are investing in nearer geothermal energy startups. Amazon, which has put its weight behind Anthropic AI, recently announced an energy agreement with Talen Energy to purchase energy from its Susquehanna, Pennsylvania nuclear plant. Microsoft founder and former CEO Bill Gates has also invested billions into smaller, more experimental nuclear reactors across the country. Microsoft's turn toward nuclear comes amidst an apparent shifting of attitudes towards the once criticized energy source. More than half (57%) of Pennsylvania residents surveyed by a local polling firm this year said they would support reopening Three Mile Island. Nationally, 56% of US adults polled by the Pew Research center said they supported nuclear energy, a figure up sharply from 43% just four years ago. Last year, California lawmakers abruptly reversed a decision to close down the Diablo Canyon Power Plant. Meanwhile the federal government and the state of Michigan are reportedly spending $2 billion to reopen the Palisades nuclear reactor. The mix of shifting perceptions around nuclear and the tech industry's sudden need for new energy have potentially put US nuclear energy in one of its most promising positions in recent years.

Microsoft needs so much power for AI that Three Mile Island is reopening

Microsoft (MSFT) and the energy firm Constellation (CEG) have signed a 20-year deal to supply power to the tech giant, including reopening one of the nuclear reactors on Three Mile Island. Under the deal announced Friday, Microsoft will buy energy from the renewed plant to power its data centers, which have become even more energy hungry as the company looks to build up its artificial intelligence capabilities. "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," Joe Dominguez, the president and CEO of Constellation, said in a statement. The deal sets the stage for the reopening of Three Mile Island's Unit 1 reactor, which was shuttered in 2019 due to funding issues and had begun a decades-long process of being decommissioned. The new Crane Clean Energy Center is expected to go online in 2028, and will create 3,400 direct and indirect jobs and provide more than $3 billion in state and federal taxes, Constellation said. "Before it was prematurely shuttered due to poor economics, this plant was among the safest and most reliable nuclear plants on the grid, and we look forward to bringing it back with a new name and a renewed mission to serve as an economic engine for Pennsylvania," Dominguez said. The reactor is located next to -- but is fully independent from -- the Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor, which partially melted down in 1979. That was the worst accident ever at a U.S. commercial nuclear power plant. Its neighbor was unaffected and continued operating for decades. Constellation said it will make "significant investments" to restore the plant, including the turbine, generator, main power transformer, and cooling and control systems. The company is seeking licensing to extend plant operations to at least 2054. The Crane Clean Energy Center will provide upwards of 800 megawatts to the grid, Constellation said. AI has put energy supply questions back into focus. In its annual forecast, the International Energy Agency estimated that data centers' total electricity consumption could reach more than 1,000 terawatt hours in 2026. A single Google (GOOGL) search uses 0.3 watt-hours of electricity, while a request for OpenAI's ChatGPT takes 2.9 watt-hours. If there were 9 billion ChatGPT queries daily, this would require almost 10 terawatt hours of additional electricity in a year.

Microsoft, hungry for AI power, spurs revival of Three Mile Island nuclear plant

(Bloomberg) -- The owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania will invest $1.6 billion to revive it, agreeing to sell all the output to Microsoft Corp. as the tech titan seeks carbon-free electricity for data centers to power the artificial intelligence boom. Constellation Energy Corp., the biggest US operator of reactors, expects Three Mile Island to go back into service in 2028, according to a statement Friday. While one of the site's two units permanently closed almost a half-century ago after the worst US nuclear accident, Constellation is planning to reopen the other reactor, which shut in 2019 because it couldn't compete economically. Shares of Constellation Energy jumped 6.5% in premarket trading on Friday. Microsoft has agreed to purchase the energy for two decades and declined to disclose financial terms. This is the first time Microsoft has secured a dedicated, 100% nuclear facility for its use. The decision is the latest sign of surging interest in the nuclear industry as power demand for AI soars. More than a dozen reactors went dark over roughly the past decade in the face of increasing competition from cheaper natural gas and renewable energy. But growing demand for electricity -- from factories, cars and especially from data centers -- has spurred interest in nuclear plants that can provide carbon-free power around the clock. "Policymakers and the market have received a huge wake-up call," Constellation Chief Executive Officer Joe Dominguez said in an interview. "There's no version of the future of this country that doesn't rely on these nuclear assets." Constellation -- which has seen its shares jump this year thanks to mounting investor awareness of the value of power plants -- plans to fund the project from its own coffers rather than seek state or federal support. That's in contrast to Holtec International, which is pursuing the only other disclosed effort to restart a closed reactor, with about $1.8 billion in conditional funding from the US Energy Department and the state of Michigan. NextEra Energy Inc. has also said it's considering reviving a closed Iowa reactor, in part to supply data-center customers. While Constellation isn't averse to outside financial support, Dominguez said government approvals move slowly and he doesn't want to wait. Work at Three Mile Island is expected to start immediately. The deal to supply Microsoft with electricity from the 837-megawatt reactor is Constellation's biggest-ever power purchase deal. The restart effort has been in the works since early 2023, when Constellation began evaluating whether it made sense to switch the reactor back on. By early this year, the company had concluded that it wanted to pursue the project, and began talking to potential customers. Microsoft was immediately interested, Dominguez said. The nuclear power purchase will aid Microsoft's plans to run all of its massive global network of data centers on clean energy by 2025, Bobby Hollis, Microsoft's vice president for energy, said in an interview. This nuclear energy will be used to fuel data-center expansion in areas like Chicago, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio. While the additional nuclear power will help Microsoft's climate goals, it does not address the most intractable issue - emissions from concrete, steel and chips used in the data centers, Hollis said. "This is not a simple piece, but it's easier than figuring out how to decarbonize the entire supply chain," he said. Still, data centers make a useful customer for nuclear power. Wind and solar power outputs can vary, while a nuclear plant generally runs constantly and requires a customer that can take all of that electricity, Hollis said. That makes tech companies selling cloud computing an ideal option. "We run around the clock. They run around the clock," he said. Microsoft isn't the only tech company looking to nuclear power to fuel its AI ambitions. Earlier this year, Amazon.com Inc.'s cloud computing division agreed to spend $650 million to acquire a data center campus connected to Talen Energy Corp.'s 40-year-old nuclear power plant on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. While the Three Mile Island reactor was mothballed in 2019, Dominguez said the equipment is still in good shape. Still, restarting it will require significant investments in the main transformer, turbine and cooling systems. The company will have to restaff the facility and must seek approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Constellation will also seek to extend its operating license through 2054, and is planning to rename the facility the Crane Clean Energy Center, after the late Chris Crane, former CEO of Exelon Corp., which spun out its generation unit to become Constellation in 2022. One of the biggest hurdles will be connecting the plant to the power grid operated by PJM Interconnection LLC, which has a lengthy queue. If PJM can move fast enough, Dominguez said the facility could potentially be ready to supply power as early as 2027. "I'm so glad we're reversing a terrible mistake that shouldn't have happened," he said. "It will be a lot more difficult to achieve the energy transition if we only want to use wind and solar and storage."

Three Mile Island's nuclear plant to reopen, help power Microsoft's AI centers

A deal between Constellation Energy and Microsoft will restart Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island, the site of the country's worst nuclear accident, to help power the tech giant's growing artificial intelligence ambitions. Under the agreement, Constellation would revive the plant's undamaged reactor, which was too costly to run and closed in 2019, and sell the power to Microsoft. The plan signals the gargantuan amount of power needed for data centers for AI, along with the tech industry's thirst for a carbon-free, round-the-clock electricity source needed to meet climate goals. Constellation expects to spend around $1.6 billion to restart the reactor by early 2028. Microsoft has signed a 20-year power-purchase agreement with Constellation, the companies said Friday. The deal would help Microsoft pair its 24-7 electricity use with a matching source of nearby clean power generation. "The most important energy commodity in the world today is a reliable and clean electric megawatt just because of the difficulty of replicating it and the need for it," Joe Dominguez, Constellation's chief executive officer, said in an interview. Bobby Hollis, vice president of energy for Microsoft, called the agreement "a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid." Three Mile Island's undamaged Unit 1 reactor sits next to Unit 2, which was shut down after a partial core meltdown in 1979 led to five days of panic. The incident heightened awareness of nuclear plants' potential safety problems and contributed to a loss of enthusiasm for the industry that lasted decades. But the 835-megawatt Unit 1 continued operating and closed only under economic pressure five years ago. Dominguez said despite losing money for years it was "the best-performing reactor in our fleet and arguably the best-performing reactor in America." Years of flat U.S. power demand had created a bruising battle for market share. Nuclear plants had a tough time competing against renewable energy and natural-gas-fired plants that tapped into a cheap source of fuel from the U.S. shale boom. That landscape has reversed. Forecasts for power demand have zoomed higher with more data centers, new domestic manufacturing and a push to electric power for transportation, heat and heavy industry. Tech companies scouring the country for carbon-free electricity have zeroed in on America's nuclear-power plants. Microsoft already purchases nuclear energy from Constellation for a data center in Virginia when wind and solar power aren't available, and signed a first-of-its-kind contract for fusion energy, betting it might be delivered this decade. Nuclear power advocates see a window of opportunity to halt or unwind the closure of existing plants, or to add small modular reactors, newer designs that many consider the best option for fresh projects. New tax credits, potential support for financially strapped plants or loans for new projects have become available through federal legislation. Critics question whether reactors that began operating decades ago can safely come back online. After Constellation said earlier this year that it was examining reopening Three Mile Island, there were small local protests. The reactor had a federal license to operate until 2034 when it closed, but a restart will require safety and environmental reviews, local and state permits, and approval by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Separately, Constellation will pursue license renewal to extend plant operations to at least 2054. This is the second U.S. attempt to revive a closed nuclear reactor. The federal government and the state of Michigan are spending nearly $2 billion to restart the Palisades nuclear reactor on the shores of Lake Michigan. That plant was mothballed in 2022, with reopening targeted for October 2025. In Iowa, NextEra Energy is considering reopening the Duane Arnold Energy Center, a nuclear plant that closed in 2020. A Three Mile Island restart, along with potential investments at other reactors that could boost nuclear power output, called uprating, means Constellation could add around 2,000 megawatts of nuclear power within "a handful of years," Dominguez said. Electricity use varies by region, but that is roughly enough to power more than 1.5 million homes. It is also nearly as much power as what is produced by two new reactors at Georgia's Vogtle plant, the first new nuclear project completed in years in the U.S. Vogtle faced years of delays and cost more than $30 billion, souring the appetite for new conventional reactors. "Things that we build are going to just take a lot longer and we have this need now," Dominguez said. Microsoft has begun testing whether AI could help streamline the notoriously challenging regulatory approval process. Constellation has already ordered some equipment, including the main transformer for the plant, which needs to be replaced, and U.S.-sourced nuclear fuel. Three Mile Island will be renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center after former Exelon CEO Chris Crane, who died in April at age 65. Crane was a proponent of nuclear energy and oversaw the spinout of Constellation from Exelon in 2022 before retiring. Constellation produces more than a fifth of the country's nuclear power. Write to Jennifer Hiller at jennifer.hiller@wsj.com

Microsoft announces plan to reopen Three Mile Island nuclear power plant to support AI

A dormant nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania may soon be reactivated to help power some of the increasing energy needs of Microsoft. On Friday, Constellation Energy and Microsoft announced the signing of a 20-year power purchasing agreement, in which one of the reactors at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant would be brought back online to exclusively serve the energy needs of the tech giant's massive data centers that help support artificial intelligence. Neither Constellation Energy nor Microsoft disclosed the financial terms of the deal. Reviving the Unit 1 reactor at Three Mile Island, which was shut down in 2019, will require approval by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. If granted, the power plant is expected to return to operation in 2028. A first for nuclear power "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," Joe Dominguez, president and CEO of Constellation Energy, said in a statement on Friday. When Three Mile Island was shuttered for economic reasons in 2019, it had a generating capacity of 837 megawatts, enough to power more than 800,000 homes. Once brought back online, Constellation Energy said that it expected to once again generate more than 800 megawatts of electricity for Microsoft, as well as potentially add up $16 billion to Pennsylvania's GDP along with 3,400 direct and indirect jobs. No U.S. nuclear power plant has ever reopened after being decommissioned, which could make the Three Mile Island plant a first once it is brought back to operational status. What happened at Three Mile Island Three Mile Island, located near Harrisburg, is best known as the site of the most serious nuclear accident in U.S. history. In 1979, a mechanical failure caused the partial meltdown of the facility's Unit 2 reactor, which has remained closed ever since. While the amount of radiation released during the accident was ultimately relatively minor, the incident was widely seen as causing public distrust of the nuclear power industry. A statewide poll conducted by Susquehanna Polling & Research found state residents favoring restarting Three Mile Island by a more than 2-1 margin, according to Constellation Energy's press release. Recent power demands from tech companies, much of it driven by the vast energy resources required by data centers supporting artificial intelligence, has led them to seek out nuclear power options. Earlier this year, Amazon Web Services announced plans to purchase energy for one of it's data centers from Talen Energy's Susquehanna nuclear power plant, also located in Pennsylvania. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," Microsoft VP of Energy Bobby Hollis said on Friday. "Microsoft continues to collaborate with energy providers to develop carbon-free energy sources to help meet the grids' capacity and reliability needs,"

Microsoft's AI Energy Needs May Bring Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant Back Into Service

The site of the nation's most serious nuclear reactor accident could reopen by 2028 with Microsoft as its sole customer. The site of the worst nuclear accident in US history could come back online by 2028 to power Microsoft's data center energy needs, including AI. A purchasing agreement between Microsoft and Constellation Energy would reactivate a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania that went offline five years ago. The reactor, dubbed Unit 1, is close to Unit 2, which famously experienced a partial meltdown in 1979 in an incident that cooled enthusiasm for nuclear power in the US for decades. Pending Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval, the plant would resume operations starting in 2028 and, under a 20-year agreement, would provide energy solely to Microsoft. Constellation said in a press release that it hopes to extend operations there until at least 2054 and that the reactor would generate an additional 800 megawatts of electricity and add 3,400 jobs to the economy. A representative for Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Constellation says the Unit 1 reactor closed in 2019 for economic reasons and was previously generating 837 megawatts, enough to power more than 800,000 homes. The plant will be named Crane Clean Energy Center in honor of Constellation parent company Exelon's former CEO Chris Crane, who died in 2022. Microsoft says it's using the carbon-free energy to help meet its environmental goals. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," Bobby Hollis, Microsoft's vice president of energy, said in the release. "Microsoft continues to collaborate with energy providers to develop carbon-free energy sources to help meet the grids' capacity and reliability needs." The release does not specifically mention AI, but Microsoft's new efforts in this area have jeopardized its carbon emission goals for 2030, and the agreement might be one way Microsoft is addressing those power needs. The company's latest sustainability report showed a 30% jump in carbon emissions from 2020 to 2023. The companies did not disclose financial terms of the energy deal.

Microsoft's AI Power Needs Prompt Revival of Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant

(Bloomberg) -- The owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania will invest $1.6 billion to revive it, agreeing to sell all the output to Microsoft Corp. as the tech titan seeks carbon-free electricity for data centers to power the artificial intelligence boom. Constellation Energy Corp., the biggest US operator of reactors, expects Three Mile Island to go back into service in 2028, according to a statement Friday. While one of the site's two units permanently closed almost a half-century ago after the worst US nuclear accident, Constellation is planning to reopen the other reactor, which shut in 2019 because it couldn't compete economically. Microsoft has agreed to purchase the energy for two decades and declined to disclose financial terms. This is the first time Microsoft has secured a dedicated, 100% nuclear facility for its use. The decision is the latest sign of surging interest in the nuclear industry as power demand for AI soars. More than a dozen reactors went dark over roughly the past decade in the face of increasing competition from cheaper natural gas and renewable energy. But growing demand for electricity -- from factories, cars and especially from data centers -- has spurred interest in nuclear plants that can provide carbon-free power around the clock. "Policymakers and the market have received a huge wake-up call," Constellation Chief Executive Officer Joe Dominguez said in an interview. "There's no version of the future of this country that doesn't rely on these nuclear assets." Constellation -- which has seen its shares jump this year thanks to mounting investor awareness of the value of power plants -- plans to fund the project from its own coffers rather than seek state or federal support. That's in contrast to Holtec International, which is pursuing the only other disclosed effort to restart a closed reactor, with about $1.8 billion in conditional funding from the US Energy Department and the state of Michigan. NextEra Energy Inc. has also said it's considering reviving a closed Iowa reactor, in part to supply data-center customers. While Constellation isn't averse to outside financial support, Dominguez said government approvals move slowly and he doesn't want to wait. Work at Three Mile Island is expected to start immediately. The deal to supply Microsoft with electricity from the 837-megawatt reactor is Constellation's biggest-ever power purchase deal. The restart effort has been in the works since early 2023, when Constellation began evaluating whether it made sense to switch the reactor back on. By early this year, the company had concluded that it wanted to pursue the project, and began talking to potential customers. Microsoft was immediately interested, Dominguez said. The nuclear power purchase will aid Microsoft's plans to run all of its massive global network of data centers on clean energy by 2025, Bobby Hollis, Microsoft's vice president for energy, said in an interview. This nuclear energy will be used to fuel data-center expansion in areas like Chicago, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio. While the additional nuclear power will help Microsoft's climate goals, it does not address the most intractable issue - emissions from concrete, steel and chips used in the data centers, Hollis said. "This is not a simple piece, but it's easier than figuring out how to decarbonize the entire supply chain," he said. Still, data centers make a useful customer for nuclear power. Wind and solar power outputs can vary, while a nuclear plant generally runs constantly and requires a customer that can take all of that electricity, Hollis said. That makes tech companies selling cloud computing an ideal option. "We run around the clock. They run around the clock," he said. Microsoft isn't the only tech company looking to nuclear power to fuel its AI ambitions. Earlier this year, Amazon.com Inc.'s cloud computing division agreed to spend $650 million to acquire a data center campus connected to Talen Energy Corp.'s 40-year-old nuclear power plant on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. While the Three Mile Island reactor was mothballed in 2019, Dominguez said the equipment is still in good shape. Still, restarting it will require significant investments in the main transformer, turbine and cooling systems. The company will have to restaff the facility and must seek approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Constellation will also seek to extend its operating license through 2054, and is planning to rename the facility the Crane Clean Energy Center, after the late Chris Crane, former CEO of Exelon Corp., which spun out its generation unit to become Constellation in 2022. One of the biggest hurdles will be connecting the plant to the power grid operated by PJM Interconnection LLC, which has a lengthy queue. If PJM can move fast enough, Dominguez said the facility could potentially be ready to supply power as early as 2027. "I'm so glad we're reversing a terrible mistake that shouldn't have happened," he said. "It will be a lot more difficult to achieve the energy transition if we only want to use wind and solar and storage."

Microsoft wants Three Mile Island to fuel its AI power needs

Microsoft just signed a deal to revive the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. If approved by regulators, the software maker would have exclusive rights to 100 percent of the output in order power its AI data centers. Constellation, the owner of the Three Mile Island plant, announced a power purchase agreement with Microsoft earlier today, which should see the site coming back online in 2028, assuming regulators approve it. The reactor that Microsoft plans to source its energy from was retired in 2019 for economic reasons, and is located next to a unit that was shutdown in 1979 after the worst US nuclear accident in history. The plant that Constellation plans to reopen can generate 837 megawatts of energy, enough to power more than 800,000 homes -- demonstrating the huge amount of power needed for data centers and Microsoft's AI ambitions. Microsoft has agreed to purchase power from the plant -- which will be renamed to the Crane Clean Energy Center to honor the late Chris Crane, former CEO of Exelon -- for 20 years in a first of its kind deal for the software giant. Microsoft's own greenhouse gas emissions are growing with its focus on AI, putting its ambitious climate goals at risk. Bloomberg reports that this nuclear plant would help Microsoft's plans to run its data centers on clean energy by 2025, and power data center expansions in Chicago, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," says Bobby Hollis, vice president of energy at Microsoft. "Microsoft continues to collaborate with energy providers to develop carbon-free energy sources to help meet the grids' capacity and reliability needs." Microsoft has been betting on next-generation nuclear reactors to power its data center and AI plans recently, looking for someone who could roll out a plan for small modular reactors (SMR) last year. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is also a "big believer that nuclear energy can help us solve the climate problem." Constellation will invest $1.6 billion to revive the plant, and the company will need approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to bring the site back online, alongside permits from state and local agencies. Constellation is also pursuing a license renewal to extend plant operations until at least 2054.

Microsoft inks deal to restart Three Mile Island nuclear reactor to fuel its voracious AI ambitions

Modern AI data centers consume enormous amounts of power, and it looks like they will get even more power-hungry in the coming years as companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI strive towards artificial general intelligence (AGI). Oracle has already outlined plans to use nuclear power plants for its 1-gigawatt datacenters. It looks like Microsoft plans to do the same as it just inked a deal to restart a nuclear power plant to feed its data centers, reports Bloomberg. 819 MW for AI and cloud data centers Constellation Energy will invest $1.6 billion to restart its Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. The revived reactor will provide clean electricity to Microsoft for 20 years, supporting the tech giant's AI and cloud computing energy needs. This reactor had a generating capacity of approximately 819 megawatts (MW) of electricity, which is enough power for a small to medium-sized city with hundreds of thousands of homes. The plant should be operational by 2028, and it will serve Microsoft exclusively. This agreement represents Microsoft's first long-term commitment to nuclear energy, which is part of its strategy to meet its growing energy needs with carbon-free sources. Three Mile Island has two reactors, one of which (with a capacity of 906 MW) was shut down in 1979 after a nuclear accident. The other (with a capacity of 819 MW), closed in 2019 due to economic issues, is now set to reopen thanks to the deal with Microsoft. The restart project has been in development since early 2023 when Constellation began evaluating the feasibility of bringing the reactor back online. After deciding to proceed with the project, the company entered discussions with potential buyers, with Microsoft showing immediate interest. Work on the plant will include extensive upgrades to essential equipment, such as the main transformer, turbine, and cooling systems. The facility will need to be fully restaffed, and Constellation plans to seek approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to extend the reactor's operating license until 2054. Constellation will finance the $1.6 billion project without government aid, unlike other reactor revival efforts seeking state or federal support. For example, Holtec International is reviving a Michigan reactor with $1.8 billion in conditional government funding, according to Bloomberg. While Constellation is not opposed to outside help, its CEO, Joe Dominguez, prefers to avoid delays that often come with securing government approvals. The decision to restart Three Mile Island comes amid a broader resurgence of interest in nuclear power, especially from tech companies. As demand for cloud computing and AI grows, so does the need for stable, reliable energy sources that can run 24/7. These requirements make nuclear power an attractive option compared to the intermittency of renewable energy sources like wind and solar. One of the project's more challenging aspects will be connecting the reactor to the power grid managed by PJM Interconnection. PJM has a long queue of projects awaiting grid connections, but the head of Constellation hopes that progress can be made quickly enough to have the plant supplying power by 2027. Managing carbon footprint Microsoft's decision to partner with Constellation highlights the challenges of managing its carbon footprint. The company aims to power its entire global network of data centers with clean energy by 2025, and this nuclear deal will help achieve this goal. However, despite the benefits of nuclear power, it does not fully solve issues like emissions from the materials used in data centers, such as steel, concrete, and semiconductors. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative. Microsoft continues to collaborate with energy providers to develop carbon-free energy sources to help meet the grids' capacity and reliability needs," said Bobby Hollis, VP of Energy at Microsoft. Microsoft is not the only tech company turning to nuclear power to support its data centers. Nuclear power's reliability, which can operate continuously, makes it an ideal match for tech companies that require consistent energy to power their data centers around the clock. Earlier in 2024, Amazon's cloud division signed a $650 million deal to buy a data center campus connected to a nuclear plant on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. Oracle also announced plans to use three small nuclear reactors to power its 1 GW AI data centers in the future.

Microsoft in deal for Three Mile Island nuclear power to meet AI demand

Constellation Energy will reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania to provide power to Microsoft as the tech giant scours for ways to satisfy its soaring energy demand while keeping its emissions in check. The companies on Friday unveiled a 20-year power supply deal which will entail Constellation reopening Unit 1 of the nuclear facility which was shuttered in 2019, marking the first such reopening of a plant in the US. Three Mile Island's second unit, which was closed in 1979 after a partial meltdown that led to the most serious nuclear accident in US history, will remain closed. "The decision here is the most powerful symbol of the rebirth of nuclear power as a clean and reliable energy source," said Constellation chief executive Joe Dominguez on a call with investors. Nuclear power has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years after accidents including Three Mile Island and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and the Fukushima accident in 2011 led to a shift away from the power source in many parts of the world. But nuclear's ability to provide round the clock carbon-free power has pushed it back into the spotlight as the world looks to slash emissions while feeding rapidly growing energy demand. Big Tech has struggled to find ways of feeding the surging power demand created by artificial intelligence infrastructure while sticking to its climate goals. Microsoft earlier this year said its emissions had risen almost a third since 2020. Like many of its rivals, the tech group has set an array of climate goals, including targets to become "carbon negative" and achieve "zero waste" by 2030. The Three Mile Island restart will provide more than 800MW of power, all of which Microsoft will purchase under the 20-year deal. The plant is set to come online in 2028 and stay operational until at least 2054. The location of the Microsoft facilities that will receive the output was not specified. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonise the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," said Bobby Hollis, Microsoft's vice-president of energy. The facility will be renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center, after Constellation's late former chief executive Chris Crane. Shares in the company, which will spend roughly $1.6bn on the project, rose 14 per cent in Friday morning trading in New York. The US is home to the world's largest national fleet of 94 reactors, which provides almost a fifth of the country's electricity supplies. In a drive to promote emissions-free power the Department of Energy is offering several billion dollars of subsidies to nuclear operators to keep ageing plants set for decommissioning open for longer. The push to extend the lives of nuclear facilities comes as US electricity demand booms after years of stagnation, driven by emerging technologies such as AI, as well as the roll out of electric vehicles, prompting warnings over the stability of the power grid. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a regulatory body, has sharply increased projections for peak power demand for the next decade, reversing steady or falling growth rates from previous years. Jim Robb, NERC's chief executive, earlier this year told the Financial Times that projected demand growth over the next 10 years was now nearly double what it was five years ago. He said major upgrades were needed to ensure reliability of the electricity system in the years ahead. The US is also developing next-generation nuclear technologies and is among countries seeking to produce smaller reactor models.

Microsoft Wants to Reboot Three Mile Island to Power Its AI Data Centers

Here's How To Install Your Own Uncensored Local GPT-Like Chatbot Microsoft announced on Friday that it has signed an agreement with Constellation Energy to purchase electricity from the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear plant in order to power its AI data centers. The "Unit 1" nuclear station has been out of commission since 2019, when it was shuttered due to low demand and increased competition from greener alternatives like solar, hydro, and wind. Unit 2 has been offline since 1979 when it partially melted down in what would become the single worst commercial nuclear accident in American history. The Three Mile Island disaster effectively sealed nuclear power's fate in the U.S., the accident setting off waves of opposition to the technology, leading to stringent new regulations, and accelerating the decline in developing new nuclear plants. Nearly 50 years later, that calculus has changed as hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google, and Oracle race to build ever more powerful and capable language models. Constellation plans to spend $1.6 billion to get Unit 1 back online. The company expects to do so by 2028, assuming they can get regulatory approval. While the particulars of the deal have not been confirmed, Microsoft has disclosed that it plans to purchase the entirety of Unit 1's 843 megawatt output for the next 20 years. Per a report commissioned by the Pennsylvania Building & Construction Trades Council, the deal is expected to generate 3,400 jobs in the region, more than $3 billion in state and federal taxes, and add $16 billion to Pennsylvania's GDP. "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," Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez said in a press statement. "Nuclear plants are the only energy sources that can consistently deliver on that promise." While this is Microsoft's first foray into dedicated nuclear power for its AI data centers, the idea is not a new one for the industry. This past March, Amazon purchased a 960MW power plant, and the 1,200-acre Pennsylvania campus it sits upon, from Talen Energy for $650 million. It, too, plans to use that energy to power its AI data centers in the region. "Several years ago, Amazon set an ambitious goal to reach net-zero carbon by 2040 -- ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement. As part of that goal, we're on a path to power our operations with 100 percent renewable energy by 2025 -- five years ahead of our original 2030 target," an Amazon spokesperson stated at the time. "To supplement our wind and solar energy projects, which depend on weather conditions to generate energy, we're also exploring new innovations and technologies and investing in other sources of clean, carbon-free energy." Source: Bloomberg, TechCrunch

Microsoft's Energy Needs May Bring Three Mile Island Plant Back Into Service

The site of the nation's most serious nuclear reactor accident could reopen by 2028 with Microsoft as its sole customer. The site of the U.S.'s worst nuclear accident in 1979 could come back online by 2028 to power Microsoft's data center energy needs, including AI. A purchasing agreement between Microsoft and Constellation Energy would reactivate a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania that went offline five years ago. The reactor, dubbed Unit 1, is close to Unit 2, which famously melted down in an incident that cooled enthusiasm for nuclear power in the U.S. for decades. Pending Nuclear Regulatory Commision approval, the plant would resume operations starting in 2028 and under a 20-year agreement, would provide energy solely to Microsoft. Constellation said in a press release that it hopes to extend operations there until at least 2054, and that the reactor would generate an additional 800 megawatts of electricity and add 3,400 jobs to the economy. A representative for Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Constellation says the reactor closed in 2019 for economic reasons and was previously generating 837 megawatts, enough to power more than 800,000 homes. The plant will be named Crane Clean Energy Center in honor of Constellation parent company Exelon's former CEO Chris Crane, who died in 2022. Microsoft says it's using the carbon-free energy to help meet its environmental goals. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," said Microsoft's vice-president of energy Bobby Hollis in the release. "Microsoft continues to collaborate with energy providers to develop carbon-free energy sources to help meet the grids' capacity and reliability needs." The release does not specifically mention AI, but Microsoft's efforts in this new technology has jeopardized its carbon emission goals for 2030 and the agreement might be one way Microsoft is addressing those power needs. The company's latest sustainability report showed a 30 percent jump in carbon emissions from 2020 to 2023. The companies did not disclose financial terms of the energy deal.

US nuclear plant Three Mile Island to reopen to power Microsoft

Microsoft will use this energy to support power grids in the mid-Atlantic states around Washington DC, a region considered an internet crossroads. This area faces severe strain from data centers' massive energy consumption, raising concerns about grid stability as AI demands increase.Three Mile Island, the site of America's worst nuclear accident, will restart operations to provide power to Microsoft, Constellation Energy announced Friday. The 20-year agreement involves restarting Unit 1, which "operated at industry-leading levels of safety and reliability for decades before being shut down for economic reasons exactly five years ago," the company said in a statement. Unit 1 was not involved in the 1979 partial nuclear meltdown at the Pennsylvania site. Before its premature retirement in 2019, the plant could power over 800,000 average homes. Microsoft will use this energy to support power grids in the mid-Atlantic states around Washington DC, a region considered an internet crossroads. This area faces severe strain from data centers' massive energy consumption, raising concerns about grid stability as AI demands increase. Tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are rapidly expanding their data center capabilities to meet the AI revolution's computing and electricity needs. Microsoft told US media that Three Mile Island's nuclear energy will bolster grids for data center expansion in Chicago, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Many tech companies are betting on nuclear power's rapid development to meet AI's electricity demands. Amazon's AWS agreed in March to invest $650 million in a data center campus powered by another 40-year-old Pennsylvania nuclear plant, further highlighting tech companies' growing interest in nuclear energy. They are also interested in small modular reactors (SMRs), which are more compact and potentially easier to deploy. However, this technology is still in its infancy and lacks regulatory approval, leading companies to seek out existing nuclear power options. Constellation Energy expects the Three Mile Island reactor to go back online in 2028. Bobby Hollis, Microsoft's vice president of energy, called the agreement "a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative." The 1979 partial meltdown of Unit 2 at Three Mile Island caused panic in the United States and brought the deployment of nuclear energy to a standstill for a generation. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission deemed it the "most serious accident in US commercial nuclear power plant operating history," though it noted no detectable health effects on workers or the public from the small radioactive releases.

Microsoft to Revive Nuclear Plant on Three Mile Island to Handle AI Processing

Microsoft is moving to address the energy demands of generative AI by restarting a nuclear facility on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania -- home to an infamous nuclear meltdown incident. On Friday, the power company Constellation Energy announced the deal, which will involve supplying electricity to Microsoft's data centers over a 20-year period. The agreement involves reviving Three Mile Island Unit 1, the facility next to Three Mile Island Unit 2, which suffered a partial nuclear meltdown in 1979. The near disaster is known as the worst nuclear accident in US history, although no fatalities or injuries occurred. Unit 1, also known as TMI 1, shut down in 2019 due to a lack of funding from the state. Now Constellation Energy is preparing to revive the facility with the goal of adding "approximately 835 megawatts of carbon-free energy to the grid," it said in the announcement. That's enough energy to power about 800,000 homes. "Before it was prematurely shuttered due to poor economics, this plant was among the safest and most reliable nuclear plants on the grid, and we look forward to bringing it back with a new name and a renewed mission to serve as an economic engine for Pennsylvania," added Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez in a statement. Constellation aims to bring the facility back online in 2028. The company also plans on renaming TM1 to "Crane Clean Energy Center." Meanwhile, TMI Unit 2 is in the process of being fully decommissioned. The deal underscores the efforts the tech industry is undertaking to power next-generation AI applications, which is raising concerns about the potential environmental impact. In May, Microsoft released its 2024 Sustainability Report, which found that Microsoft's emissions went up 29%. It also used 23% more water, primarily due to "new technologies, including generative AI." Financial terms of the Constellation agreement were not disclosed. But Microsoft is portraying the deal to restart TMI1 as a win for the tech industry and its pursuit of reducing carbon emissions by harnessing nuclear power. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," says Microsoft VP of Energy Bobby Hollis. For those concerned about nuclear safety, Constellation Energy noted that "restarting a nuclear reactor requires US Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval following a comprehensive safety and environmental review, as well as permits from relevant state and local agencies."

Microsoft's Energy Needs May Bring Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant Back Into Service

The site of the nation's most serious nuclear reactor accident could reopen by 2028 with Microsoft as its sole customer. The site of the worst nuclear accident in US history could come back online by 2028 to power Microsoft's data center energy needs, including AI. A purchasing agreement between Microsoft and Constellation Energy would reactivate a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania that went offline five years ago. The reactor, dubbed Unit 1, is close to Unit 2, which famously experienced a partial meltdown in 1979 in an incident that cooled enthusiasm for nuclear power in the US for decades. Pending Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval, the plant would resume operations starting in 2028 and, under a 20-year agreement, would provide energy solely to Microsoft. Constellation said in a press release that it hopes to extend operations there until at least 2054 and that the reactor would generate an additional 800 megawatts of electricity and add 3,400 jobs to the economy. A representative for Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Constellation says the Unit 1 reactor closed in 2019 for economic reasons and was previously generating 837 megawatts, enough to power more than 800,000 homes. The plant will be named Crane Clean Energy Center in honor of Constellation parent company Exelon's former CEO Chris Crane, who died in 2022. Microsoft says it's using the carbon-free energy to help meet its environmental goals. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," Bobby Hollis, Microsoft's vice president of energy, said in the release. "Microsoft continues to collaborate with energy providers to develop carbon-free energy sources to help meet the grids' capacity and reliability needs." The release does not specifically mention AI, but Microsoft's new efforts in this area have jeopardized its carbon emission goals for 2030, and the agreement might be one way Microsoft is addressing those power needs. The company's latest sustainability report showed a 30% jump in carbon emissions from 2020 to 2023. The companies did not disclose financial terms of the energy deal.

Three Mile Island nuclear plant could restart on Microsoft AI power deal

(Reuters) -Constellation Energy and Microsoft have signed a data center deal to help resurrect a unit of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in what would be the first-ever restart of its kind, the companies said on Friday. Big tech has led to a sudden surge in U.S. electricity demand for data-centers needed to expand technologies like artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Nuclear energy, which is nearly carbon-free and broadly considered more reliable than energy sources like solar and wind, has become a popular option for technology company's with uninterrupted power needs and climate pledges. "Nuclear plants are the only energy sources that can consistently deliver on that promise," Constellation Chief Executive Officer Joe Dominguez said in a statement. Constellation's shares were up 14% in early trading and have risen more than 100% so far this year. A relaunch of Three Mile Island, which had a separate unit suffer a partial-meltdown in 1979 in one of the biggest industrial accidents in the country's history, still requires federal, state and local approvals. The deal would help enable a revival of Unit 1 of the five-decades-old facility in Pennsylvania that was retired in 2019 due to economic reasons. Unit 2, which had the meltdown, will not be restarted. Constellation plans to spend about $1.6 billion to revive the plant, which it expects to come online by 2028. Reuters first reported on the potential restart in July. Sources told Reuters at the time that Constellation hoped it would receive federal support for Three Mile Island that was similar to what was given to the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, which received a $1.5 billion conditional loan for a relaunch from the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden. Under the Constellation-Microsoft deal, Microsoft will purchase energy from the restarted plant for a period of 20 years. The Three Mile Island unit will provide 835 megawatts of energy to the tech giant. A restart is expected to be challenging, but as power demand spikes, the virtually carbon-free electricity source is seeing renewed support from tech companies. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," Bobby Hollis, vice president of energy at Microsoft, said in a statement. Microsoft has also signed a power purchase agreement with Washington-state fusion company Helion, which says the plant will be online by 2028, far earlier than many scientists say fusion will become commercial. Major tech executives, including ChatGPT developer OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, have touted nuclear energy as a solution to the growing power needs of data centers. Altman has backed and is the chairman of nuclear power startup Oklo, which went public through a blank-check merger in May, while TerraPower - a startup Gates co-founded - broke ground on a nuclear facility in June. Nuclear plants generated about 18.6% of the total electricity in the U.S. last year, according to Energy Information Administration data. The power supply deals with A.I. data centers are also facing increased scrutiny. A similar deal between Talen Energy and Amazon signed earlier this year has been challenged by a group of electric utilities alleging it could spike costs for customers or hamper grid reliability. Financial details of the Microsoft-Constellation deal were not disclosed. The companies declined to give more details on the agreement. (Reporting by Laila Kearney in New York, Mrinalika Roy and Sourasis Bose in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Tim Gardner in Washington; Editing by Janane Venkatraman, Sriraj Kalluvila and Nick Zieminski)

Three Mile Island nuclear plant to reopen -- to power Microsoft's AI push

This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in. One of the reactors closed after a system malfunction caused its partial meltdown in 1979. The second reactor remained open after the accident before finally closing in 2019. It is this reactor that will be refurbished and reopened. Tech giants, including Microsoft, are increasingly exploring nuclear energy as a power source for energy-hungry AI data centers. Job postings uploaded last year suggested that Microsoft, which has invested heavily in AI through its partnership with OpenAI, was exploring using nuclear energy to power its data centers. Bobby Hollis, Microsoft's VP for energy, told Bloomberg that the Three Mile Island reactor will help Microsoft meet its target of being carbon-negative by 2030 and that energy from the site will be used for data center expansion in Pennsylvania and nearby states. The AI models that power chatbots like ChatGPT require huge amounts of energy to train and run, supercharging a wave of spending on data centers across the US. That, in turn, has sparked concerns over AI's environmental impact, with experts warning that building AI systems requires vast amounts of water and emits tons of carbon dioxide. Microsoft and Constellation did not respond to a request for comment, sent outside normal working hours.

Microsoft plans to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant that narrowly avoided disaster

Microsoft is in the midst of a deal that would bring the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear power plant back to life, according to reporting by The Washington Post. If the name sounds familiar, it's because the Pennsylvania plant was home to a partial meltdown of one of its reactors back in 1979. The deal would make Microsoft the plant's sole customer for 20 years, meaning it'll hoover up 100 percent of the power all for itself. Why does the company need so much juice? You can guess. It's for AI, which is notoriously power hungry. Look, if it takes an entire nuclear power plant so we can ask Bing to whip up an image of Steve Urkel in space riding a skateboard, then we gotta do it. It's the future... or whatever. Let's break it down further. If this deal is approved by regulators, Three Mile Island will provide Microsoft with enough energy to power 800,000 homes. Again, no homes will be getting that energy, but don't worry. Microsoft will be able to hold a live streaming event to show off some ghoulish new AI video generation tools or something. I know I'm coming off as a real troglodyte here, but there is a silver lining. This could help Microsoft meet its pledge to power AI development with zero emissions electricity. It's not as if these companies would give up on AI if there wasn't a decommissioned nuclear power plant sitting around, so this move could help alleviate some of the strain that's already being placed on our power grid due to ye olde artificial intelligence. If approved, this would be a first-of-its-kind deal for a couple of reasons. A commercial power plant has never worked exclusively for one client before. It'll also be the very first time a decommissioned power plant has come back online. It's worth noting that the plant shut down five years ago for economic reasons, which has nothing to do with the partial meltdown from 1979. The current plan is for it to resume operations by 2028. "The energy industry cannot be the reason China or Russia beats us in AI," said Joseph Dominguez, chief executive of Constellation, the company that owns the plant. I'd take his jingoistic language with a grain of salt, however, as Constellation stands to make an absolute boatload of cash from this deal. Let's do some math. Yearly profits from a nuclear power plant averages $470 million. Microsoft will be the exclusive buyer of this energy for 20 years, which totals $9.4 billion. Constellation is spending $1.6 billion to get the plant going again, along with federal subsidies and tax breaks provided by the Inflation Recovery Act. This leaves $7.8 billion in sweet, sweet profit. That's just a guesstimate, but you get the gist. The company does promise $1 million in "philanthropic giving to the region" over the next five years. That's $200,000 a year. This isn't a done deal. There are many regulatory hurdles that Constellation will have to jump over. This includes intensive safety inspections from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has never authorized a plant reopening. There's also likely to be an inquiry into those aforementioned tax breaks, as all of the energy is going to one private company and not serving entire communities. But come on. Steve Urkel on a skateboard in space. On the plus side, Constellation will need around 600 employees to run the plant, according to the New York Times. Jobs are good. Also, the company says it won't be seeking any additional subsidies from Pennsylvania. The Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan is also looking to reopen for business, but it plans on servicing the local grid and not the gaping maw of AI.

This Nuclear Power plant in the US is reopening for Microsoft, here's the 'big why' - Times of India

Microsoft has agreed to a 20-year deal with Constellation Energy to revive the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, aiming to power its growing artificial intelligence data centres with carbon-free electricity. Three Mile Island, infamous for a 1979 partial meltdown in its Unit 2 reactor, has been a symbol of nuclear power's risks. This restart attempt focuses on the separate, undamaged Unit 1. Constellation plans to invest $1.6 billion to restart the plant's undamaged Unit 1 reactor by early 2028, pending regulatory approvals.The 837-megawatt reactor, which closed in 2019 due to economic pressures, will be renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center. This marks the first time Microsoft has secured a dedicated, 100% nuclear facility for its use. The Redmond giant will have exclusive rights to the reactor's entire output, helping fuel data centre expansions in Chicago, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid," said Bobby Hollis, Microsoft's vice president of energy. The company aims to run all its global data centres on clean energy by 2025. 'Largest-ever power purchase deal' Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez called the agreement their largest-ever power purchase deal, stating, "There's no version of the future of this country that doesn't rely on these nuclear assets." The project faces potential hurdles, including regulatory reviews, equipment upgrades, and grid connection challenges. However, if successful, it could mark a turning point for the nuclear industry and the tech sector's approach to powering AI infrastructure. The revival requires approvals from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and state and local agencies. Constellation will also seek to extend the plant's operating licence through 2054. The TOI Tech Desk is a dedicated team of journalists committed to delivering the latest and most relevant news from the world of technology to readers of The Times of India. TOI Tech Desk's news coverage spans a wide spectrum across gadget launches, gadget reviews, trends, in-depth analysis, exclusive reports and breaking stories that impact technology and the digital universe. Be it how-tos or the latest happenings in AI, cybersecurity, personal gadgets, platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and more; TOI Tech Desk brings the news with accuracy and authenticity.

Microsoft signs deal with owner of Three Mile Island: nuclear power for its AI data centers

Microsoft has just signed a 20-year deal with Constellation Energy, the owner of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, and once revived, will provide clean energy to Microsoft and its AI data center and cloud computing needs for 20 years. Three Mile Island has two nuclear reactors: the first with a capacity of 906 MW was shut down back in 1979 after the "Three Mile Island nuclear incident" that I'm sure you've heard of (if not, you should read into it). The other, has a capacity of 819 MW and was closed in 2019 over economic issues, but will now be restarted thanks to the deal with Microsoft. Constellation Energy will invest $1.6 billion in restarting the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor, a process that had been in development since early 2023 when the company looked at the feasibility of bringing the nuclear reactor back online. After it decided to go ahead and restart the nuclear reactor, it began talking with potential buyers... with Microsoft showing immediate interest, and now the deal is inked (and for 20 years). Constellation Energy will be upgrading essential equipment of its nuclear reactor, including the main transformer, turbine, and cooling systems. The nuclear reactor will need to be fully restaffed, with Constellation Energy looking to seek approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to extend Three Mile Island's nuclear reactor operating license all the way through to 2054. The unstoppable surge of AI is prompting companies to look for new ways -- or in some cases, in this case, old ways with new leases on life thanks to AI -- which is leading companies into the arms of nuclear power. It's like the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining craze, you've got to get the immense power from somewhere... and nuclear power is it.

Three Mile Island nuclear plant to help power Microsoft's data-center needs

Cooling towers at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant, in Middletown, Pa., on March 28, 2011.Jeff Fusco / Getty Images file A unit of Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant will be restarted as part of a new energy-sharing agreement with Microsoft, which plans to use it to power the data centers it operates as part of its push into artificial intelligence. In a joint release, Microsoft and Constellation Energy, Pennsylvania's main utility, said Three Mile Island Unit 1, a unit separate from the one that sparked the infamous shutdown nearly five decades ago, will be used to provide clean energy to the tech giant as the artificial intelligence arms race heats up. Constellation shut down Unit 1 in 2019 due to operating losses. Unit 2 was shut down in the wake of the 1979 incident that saw a partial core meltdown that led radioactive compounds to be released into the environment. Studies have produced a range of estimates for the death toll over the course of 30 years as a result of the radiation release -- but it is often cited as having set back America's nuclear-energy push for a generation. Today, energy has become the new coin of the realm for companies investing in artificial intelligence. That's because the data centers tasked with running the complex calculations needed to power artificial intelligence applications require enormous amounts of power. Restarting Unit 1 will mean bringing 800 megawatts back onto the grid, greater than the amount of hydroelectric power supplied by the Hoover Dam. Additional shuttered nuclear factories now being considered for reactivation amid the broader AI-data center push can be found in Michigan and Iowa, while a half-dozen other states are reversing moratoriums on new nuclear plants. Microsoft's vice president of energy touted the clean-energy benefits of reviving the facility in a statement. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," Bobby Hollis said. "Microsoft continues to collaborate with energy providers to develop carbon-free energy sources to help meet the grids' capacity and reliability needs." Earlier this week, Microsoft and investment group BlackRock announced a new, $100 billion initiative to develop data centers for artificial intelligence. While analysts are still debating what the AI push has accomplished to date, companies worldwide see it as the next great business opportunity. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently shrugged off doubts about AI's payoff, comparing it to the trajectory of the Industrial Revolution "There was not that much industrial growth, and then it took off," he said at a recent conference. "1817 in the United States to the 1940s was just one of those golden ages."

They're planning to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant to power Microsoft's cloud and AI data centers

The Three Mile Island power plant operating in 2011. (Image credit: Jeff Fusco/Getty Images) A nuclear reactor at the famous Three Mile Island power plant in Pennsylvania -- the site of a major accident in the '70s -- will be restarted by power company Constellation Energy to fulfill an agreement with Microsoft for carbon-free energy to power data centers. The reactor coming back online is not the one that had a partial meltdown in 1979, which has remained dormant since the accident. That was TMI-Unit 2. The adjacent reactor, TMI-Unit 1, went back into operation in 1985 and continued to operate until 2019, when it was shut down due to "poor economics," according to Constellation. The power company says that restarting TMI-Unit 1 will "add approximately 835 megawatts of carbon-free energy to the grid." Constellation hopes to have the plant back online by 2029, after refurbishing it and obtaining the necessary federal and state approvals. It's also renaming the plant Crane Clean Energy Center after Chris Crane, a nuclear energy "titan" who died earlier this year. Both Pennsylvania politicians and the US Department of Energy have praised Constellation's plan. Dr Michael Goff, acting assistant secretary of the federal agency's Office of Nuclear Energy, said that "always-on, carbon-free nuclear energy plays an important role in the fight against climate change and meeting the country's growing energy demands." Microsoft's data centers are the infrastructure that support its cloud storage and computing services, including new and notoriously energy-hungry AI processing. Microsoft VP of energy Bobby Hollis says that this power agreement, the largest it's ever made with Constellation, is a "major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid." Separately, we know that Microsoft has been looking into using "small modular reactors" and "microreactors" to power its data centers. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is also in the nuclear energy business: A company he founded in 2006, TerraPower, broke ground on a new plant in Wyoming earlier this year. "The US hasn't needed much new electricity -- but with the rise in a variety of things from electric cars and buses to electric heat pumps to heating homes, demand for electricity is going to go up a lot," Gates told NPR in June. "And now these data centers are adding to that. So the big tech companies are out looking at how they can help facilitate more power, so that these data centers can serve the exploding AI demand."

Three Mile Island nuclear plant set for restart on Microsoft AI power deal

The deal would enable a revival of Unit 1 of the five-decades-old facility in Pennsylvania that was retired in 2019 due to operational reasons. Unit 2, which was shut after a partial meltdown in 1979 - the most famous commercial nuclear accident in U.S. history - will not be restarted. Constellation, which plans to spend about $1.6 billion to renew the plant, is awaiting permits and expects the facility to come online by 2028. Reuters first reported on the potential restart in July. Under the deal, Microsoft will purchase energy from the restarted plant for a period of 20 years. The Three Mile Island unit will provide 835 megawatts of energy to the tech giant. A restart is expected to be challenging, but as power demand spikes, the virtually carbon-free electricity source is seeing renewed support from tech companies. Major tech executives, including ChatGPT developer OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, have touted nuclear energy as a solution to the growing power needs of data centers. Altman has backed and is the chairman of nuclear power startup Oklo, which went public through a blank-check merger in May, while TerraPower - a startup Gates co-founded - broke ground on a nuclear facility in June. Nuclear plants generated about 18.6% of the total electricity in the U.S. last year, according to Energy Information Administration data. The power supply deals with A.I. data centers are also facing increased scrutiny. A similar deal between Talen Energy and Amazon signed earlier this year has been challenged by a group of electric utilities alleging it could spike costs for customers or hamper grid reliability. Financial details of the Microsoft-Constellation deal were not disclosed. The companies declined to give more details on the agreement. (Reporting by Mrinalika Roy and Sourasis Bose in Bengaluru; Editing by Janane Venkatraman and Sriraj Kalluvila)

Three Mile Island nuclear plant could restart on Microsoft AI power deal

"Nuclear plants are the only energy sources that can consistently deliver on that promise," Constellation Chief Executive Officer Joe Dominguez said in a statement. Constellation's shares were up 14% in early trading and have risen more than 100% so far this year. A relaunch of Three Mile Island, which had a separate unit suffer a partial-meltdown in 1979 in one of the biggest industrial accidents in the country's history, still requires federal, state and local approvals. The deal would help enable a revival of Unit 1 of the five-decades-old facility in Pennsylvania that was retired in 2019 due to economic reasons. Unit 2, which had the meltdown, will not be restarted. Constellation plans to spend about $1.6 billion to revive the plant, which it expects to come online by 2028. Reuters first reported on the potential restart in July. Sources told Reuters at the time that Constellation hoped it would receive federal support for Three Mile Island that was similar to what was given to the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, which received a $1.5 billion conditional loan for a relaunch from the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden. Under the Constellation-Microsoft deal, Microsoft will purchase energy from the restarted plant for a period of 20 years. The Three Mile Island unit will provide 835 megawatts of energy to the tech giant. A restart is expected to be challenging, but as power demand spikes, the virtually carbon-free electricity source is seeing renewed support from tech companies. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," Bobby Hollis, vice president of energy at Microsoft, said in a statement. Microsoft has also signed a power purchase agreement with Washington-state fusion company Helion, which says the plant will be online by 2028, far earlier than many scientists say fusion will become commercial. Major tech executives, including ChatGPT developer OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, have touted nuclear energy as a solution to the growing power needs of data centers. Altman has backed and is the chairman of nuclear power startup Oklo, which went public through a blank-check merger in May, while TerraPower - a startup Gates co-founded - broke ground on a nuclear facility in June. Nuclear plants generated about 18.6% of the total electricity in the U.S. last year, according to Energy Information Administration data. The power supply deals with A.I. data centers are also facing increased scrutiny. A similar deal between Talen Energy and Amazon signed earlier this year has been challenged by a group of electric utilities alleging it could spike costs for customers or hamper grid reliability. Financial details of the Microsoft-Constellation deal were not disclosed. The companies declined to give more details on the agreement. (Reporting by Laila Kearney in New York, Mrinalika Roy and Sourasis Bose in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Tim Gardner in Washington; Editing by Janane Venkatraman, Sriraj Kalluvila and Nick Zieminski)

Microsoft's AI Power Needs Prompt Revival of Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant

The owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania will invest $1.6 billion to revive it, agreeing to sell all the output to Microsoft Corp. as the tech titan seeks carbon-free electricity for data centers to power the artificial intelligence boom. Constellation Energy Corp., the biggest US operator of reactors, expects Three Mile Island to go back into service in 2028, according to a statement Friday. While one of the site's two units permanently closed almost a half-century ago after the worst US nuclear accident, Constellation is planning to reopen the other reactor, which shut in 2019 because it couldn't compete economically.

Three Mile Island nuclear reactor to restart to power Microsoft AI operations

Pennsylvania plant was site of most serious nuclear meltdown and radiation leak in US history in 1979 A nuclear reactor at the notorious Three Mile Island site in Pennsylvania is to be activated for the first time in five years after its owners, Constellation Energy, struck a deal to provide power to Microsoft's proliferating artificial intelligence operations. The plant was the location of the most serious nuclear meltdown and radiation leak in US history, in March 1979 when the loss of water coolant through a faulty valve caused the Unit 2 reactor to overheat. More than four decades later, the reactor is still in a decommissioning phase. Constellation closed the adjacent but unconnected Unit 1 reactor in 2019 for economic reasons, but will bring it back to life after signing a 20-year power purchase agreement to supply Microsoft's energy-hungry data centers, the company announced on Friday. The restart, the first time a nuclear reactor in the US has been recommissioned after closure, will send an additional 835 megawatts of power to the Pennsylvania grid, create 3,400 jobs and contribute at least $16bn to the state's economy, Constellation said. As part of the agreement, Three Mile Island will also be renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center to recognize Chris Crane, the former chief executive of Constellation's parent company. "Before it was prematurely shuttered due to poor economics, this plant was among the safest and most reliable nuclear plants on the grid, and we look forward to bringing it back with a new name and a renewed mission," Joe Dominguez, the president and current chief executive of Constellation, said. Significant investment will be required to restore the plant, including replacing or refurbishing the turbine, generator, main power transformer and cooling and control systems, Dominguez said. There will also be a comprehensive safety and environmental review by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission before it issues a permit for the restart of the reactor, which is scheduled to be online sometime in 2028. Constellation said it would seek licenses that will extend plant operations to at least 2054. Tech giants including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and Apple are consuming ever-greater amounts of energy to power the boom in artificial intelligence. According to Goldman Sachs, demand will grow 160% by 2030, when data centers are expected to account for 8% of the power generated in the US. With the spike in demand, however, comes rising concerns over the impact on the environment. An analysis by the Guardian published this week found that data center emissions of four of the biggest tech companies, Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple, are probably about 662% - or 7.62 times - higher than officially reported.

Microsoft deal propels Three Mile Island restart, with key permits still needed

Big tech has led to a sudden surge in U.S. electricity demand for data centers needed to expand technologies like artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Nuclear energy, which is nearly carbon-free and broadly considered more reliable than energy sources like solar and wind, has become a popular option for technology company's with uninterrupted power needs and climate pledges. "Nuclear plants are the only energy sources that can consistently deliver on that promise," Constellation Chief Executive Officer Joe Dominguez said in a statement. Constellation's shares were up more than 20% by early afternoon to $251.42 and have risen more than 100% so far this year. Power from the plant would be used to offset Microsoft's data center electricity use, the companies said. A relaunch of Three Mile Island, which had a separate unit suffer a partial-meltdown in 1979 in one of the biggest industrial accidents in the country's history, still requires federal, state and local approvals. Constellation has yet to file an application with federal nuclear regulators to restart the plant. "It's up to Constellation to lay out its rationale for justifying restart, so we're prepared to engage with the company on next steps," said Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) spokesperson Scott Burnell. Constellation said it expected the NRC review process to be completed in 2027. BILLION DOLLAR BET The deal would help enable a revival of Unit 1 of the five-decades-old facility in Pennsylvania that was retired in 2019 due to economic reasons. Unit 2, which had the meltdown, will not be restarted. Constellation plans to spend about $1.6 billion to revive the plant, which it expects to come online by 2028. Reuters first reported on the potential restart in July. Sources told Reuters at the time that Constellation hoped it would receive federal support for Three Mile Island that was similar to what was given to the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, which received a $1.5 billion conditional loan for a relaunch from the Biden administration. Under the Constellation-Microsoft deal, Microsoft will purchase energy from the restarted plant for a period of 20 years. The Three Mile Island unit will provide 835 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power about 700,000 homes. A restart is expected to be challenging, but as power demand spikes, the virtually carbon-free electricity source is seeing renewed support from tech companies. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," Bobby Hollis, vice president of energy at Microsoft, said in a statement. Microsoft has also signed a power purchase agreement with Washington-state fusion company Helion, which says the plant will be online by 2028, far earlier than many scientists say fusion will become commercial. Major tech executives, including ChatGPT developer OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, have touted nuclear energy as a solution to the growing power needs of data centers. Altman has backed and is the chairman of nuclear power startup Oklo, which went public through a blank-check merger in May, while TerraPower - a startup Gates co-founded - broke ground on a nuclear facility in June. Nuclear plants generated about 18.6% of the total electricity in the U.S. last year, according to Energy Information Administration data. The power supply deals with A.I. data centers are also facing increased scrutiny. A similar deal between Talen Energy and Amazon signed earlier this year has been challenged by a group of electric utilities alleging it could spike costs for customers or hamper grid reliability. Financial details of the Microsoft-Constellation deal were not disclosed. The companies declined to give more details on the agreement. (Reporting by Laila Kearney in New York, Mrinalika Roy and Sourasis Bose in Bengaluru, and Timothy Gardner in Washington; Editing by Janane Venkatraman, Sriraj Kalluvila and Nick Zieminski)

Microsoft money to reignite Three Mile Island nuclear plant

The idle Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear power plant may soon be coming back online in Pennsylvania, thanks to a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) between Microsoft and Constellation Energy, which owns the shuttered facility. TMI Unit 1, which was retired for economic reasons in 2019, is slated for a potential revival as the Crane Clean Energy Center (CCEC), according to Constellation's announcement of a new PPA with the IT giant. While the terms of the deal remain undisclosed, reopening the facility will require approval from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, though that might not be a hard sell. Always-on, carbon-free nuclear energy plays an important role in the fight against climate change and meeting the country's growing energy demands "The start of the Crane Clean Energy Center represents an important milestone for our nation, the region, and the people of the great state of Pennsylvania," Michael Goff, acting assistant secretary for the US Dept of Energy's office of nuclear energy, said of the announcement. "Always-on, carbon-free nuclear energy plays an important role in the fight against climate change and meeting the country's growing energy demands." Constellation noted that Unit 1 will need "significant investments" to restore the plant, with work needed on the turbine, generator, main power transformer, and cooling and control systems. Lest you think this is the same Three Mile Island facility that had a partial meltdown in 1979, described as the worst commercial nuclear accident in US history, it's not: That happened at TMI Unit 2, located next door. Unit 1, on the other hand, "operated at industry-leading levels of safety and reliability for decades before being shut down for economic reasons," according to Constellation. The facility was shut down after it failed to get a needed subsidy renewed that the company said was key to competing with cheaper fossil fuels. Before its retirement, TMI Unit 1 had a generating capacity of 837 megawatts, or enough to power hundreds of thousands of typical homes, per Constellation. A recent economic analysis of the CCEC project by the Pennsylvania State Building and Construction Trades Council found that, over the 20 years of the Microsoft PPA, the CCEC will generate $16 billion in state GDP, 3,400 new jobs, and an estimated $3 billion in federal and state tax revenue. Energy generated by the facility would reduce carbon emissions in the region (TMI serves the PJM Interconnection, which provides energy from New Jersey all the way to Eastern Kentucky) by 3 million metric tons per year, according to the analysis. For all its pledges of going carbon negative by 2030, Microsoft has seen its carbon dioxide emissions rise by nearly 30 percent since 2020, and most of the blame falls squarely on AI. We've known this was coming for some time, with Google reporting similar spikes in its datacenter emissions though the Chocolate Factory said this shouldn't be blamed on its AI deployments. Exelon, a power company that counted Constellation as one of its subsidiaries until 2022, meanwhile reported that power demand from datacenters has skyrocketed, with Chicago-area bit barns set to draw nine times the energy in coming years thanks to machine-learning projects. Arm's CEO Rene Haas has separately speculated that neural networks could be responsible for eating up a quarter of US electricity by 2030. And Bill Gates has said not to worry about AI's energy problem, calling it something artificial intelligence would solve before it gets too severe - likely with a push toward renewable energy. Microsoft doesn't seem entirely onboard with the "wait and let AI solve it" approach, and this week also announced the founding of a Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership (GAIIP) with BlackRock and other private equity investors. The plan is to raise $100 billion through the GAIIP to fund datacenters and energy infrastructure around the world to support facilities running energy-hungry AI workloads. By signing a PPA with Constellation, Microsoft will purchase energy from the CCEC at a fixed price for 20 years. That power will be delivered to the grid, not directly to Microsoft, offsetting any fossil fuel-derived energy that would have otherwise powered its operation. Presumably Microsoft will benefit from this as its datacenters are connected to that grid, and will be putting demand on it, pressure that will be alleviated by the TMI reactor. The PPA with the CCEC will expire in 2044, and Constellation said it plans to pursue a license to remain in operation for an additional decade after that. It's not immediately clear if the CCEC investment is solely a Microsoft venture, or if it was negotiated through GAIIP. A Microsoft spokesperson stated they had no further comment about the plan. ®

US Nuclear Plant Three Mile Island To Reopen To Power Microsoft

Three Mile Island, the site of America's worst nuclear accident, will restart operations to provide power to Microsoft, Constellation Energy announced Friday. The 20-year agreement involves restarting Unit 1, which "operated at industry-leading levels of safety and reliability for decades before being shut down for economic reasons exactly five years ago," the company said in a statement. Unit 1 was not involved in the 1979 partial nuclear meltdown at the Pennsylvania site. Before its premature retirement in 2019, the plant could power over 800,000 average homes. Microsoft will use this energy to support power grids in the mid-Atlantic states around Washington DC, a region considered an internet crossroads. This area faces severe strain from data centers' massive energy consumption, raising concerns about grid stability as AI demands increase. Tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are rapidly expanding their data center capabilities to meet the AI revolution's computing and electricity needs. Microsoft told US media that Three Mile Island's nuclear energy will bolster grids for data center expansion in Chicago, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Many tech companies are betting on nuclear power's rapid development to meet AI's electricity demands. Amazon's AWS agreed in March to invest $650 million in a data center campus powered by another 40-year-old Pennsylvania nuclear plant, further highlighting tech companies' growing interest in nuclear energy. They are also interested in small modular reactors (SMRs), which are more compact and potentially easier to deploy. However, this technology is still in its infancy and lacks regulatory approval, leading companies to seek out existing nuclear power options. Constellation Energy expects the Three Mile Island reactor to go back online in 2028. Bobby Hollis, Microsoft's vice president of energy, called the agreement "a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative." The 1979 partial meltdown of Unit 2 at Three Mile Island caused panic in the United States and brought the deployment of nuclear energy to a standstill for a generation. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission deemed it the "most serious accident in US commercial nuclear power plant operating history," though it noted no detectable health effects on workers or the public from the small radioactive releases.

Three Mile Island is reopening to power Microsoft's AI data centers

Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, is opening up once again. Microsoft and Constellation Energy, which owns the plant, have struck a deal that will see the plant's undamaged reactor resume operations to power Microsoft's AI data centers. Microsoft has signed a 20-year power-purchase agreement with Constellation, which will spend $1.6 billion to restart the reactor. It's expected to be operational again by 2028. Constellation shares were up 14% in early trading Friday morning. "Before it was prematurely shuttered due to poor economics, this plant was among the safest and most reliable nuclear plants on the grid, and we look forward to bringing it back with a new name and a renewed mission to serve as an economic engine for Pennsylvania," said Joe Dominguez, president and CEO of Constellation in a statement. The facility's Unit 1 reactor will be restarted. That facility sits next to the Unit 2 reactor that had the partial meltdown in 1979. Unit 1 "permanently shut down" on Sept. 20, 2019 after starting operations in 1974. Constellation purchased the unit in 2000, and it produced enough electricity in the following years to power 800,000 homes for almost two years and "offset more than 95 million metric tons of carbon, the equivalent of nearly 20 million cars off the road," the company says. Constellation was not the owner of the Unit 2 reactor. The owners of approximately one-third of the country's nuclear power plants are reportedly taking with companies to help power data centers. And a big source of that demand is the growing use of artificial intelligence. That's raising concerns about the impact on the larger power grid, which has struggled some as the country experiences extreme weather conditions. (The grid is also considered a high-risk target of hackers.) Experts have warned data centers could become a big strain on the U.S. power grid, with the nine-year projected growth forecast for North America essentially doubling from where it stood a year ago. Last year, the five-year forecast from Grid Strategies projected growth of 2.6%. That number has since nearly doubled to 4.7% -- and planners expect peak demand to grow by 38 gigawatts. In real-world terms, that's sufficient to power 12.7 million homes. "The U.S. electric grid is not prepared for significant load growth," Grid Strategies warned.

AI may breathe new life into Three Mile Island to supply power to Microsoft's data centers

The owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant says 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 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 bail it out. 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. Constellation said it hopes to bring Unit 1 online in 2028 and pursue a license renewal from regulators to extend the plant's operation to at least 2054. 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 prepare to restart Unit 1, "significant investments" must be made to restore the plant, including the turbine, generator, main power transformer and cooling and control systems, Constellation said. Constellation didn't say how much money that will cost, and 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, estimated that the cost to restart the reactor will run into the billions of dollars. Microsoft will likely pay above market price for electricity that is both carbon-free and reliable, Buongiorno said. 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. But Constellation will be in for a long period of replacing or refurbishing them if everything was abandoned or dismantled, he said. The closest example of restarting a nuclear power plant is underway in Michigan, Buongiorno said. There, the federal government has promised a $1.5 billion loan to restart the Palisades nuclear power plant, shut down in 2022. The business model of the Constellation-Microsoft agreement makes sense for both sides, Buongiorno said. Plus, it is cheaper to restart a nuclear power plant than build one from scratch, he said. Already intact are transmission lines, cooling towers, the control buildings and concrete containment structures, he said. Constellation's announcement comes after a wave of coal-fired and nuclear power plants have shut down in the past decade as competition from cheap natural gas flooded power markets. That has elicited warnings that the U.S. is facing an electric reliability crisis. Meanwhile, demand is fast-growing from data centers run by tech giants like Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Google to provide cloud computing and digital services such as artificial intelligence systems. In the U.S., growth in electricity demand is concentrated in states -- primarily Virginia and Texas -- that are seeing the rapid development of large-scale data centers, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said. The data centers' share of U.S. electricity use in the United States is around 4% currently, with some projections expecting that to double by 2030. The Constellation-Microsoft agreement comes amid a push by the Biden administration, states and utilities to reconsider using nuclear power to try to blunt the effects of climate change and limit plant-warming greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector. Last year, Georgia Power began producing electricity from the first American nuclear reactor to be built from scratch in decades, after the accident at Three Mile Island froze interest in building new ones. Before it was shut down in 2019, Three Mile Island's Unit 1 had a generating capacity of 837 megawatts, which is enough to power more than 800,000 homes, Constellation said. The destroyed Unit 2 is sealed, and its twin cooling towers remain standing. Its core was shipped years ago to the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory. What is left inside the containment building remains highly radioactive and encased in concrete.

Microsoft: Buying Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Will Help 'Carbon-Free Energy' Goal

The site of America's worst nuclear disaster will soon reopen to exclusively sell power to Microsoft. Here's what you need to know. Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island was the site of America's worst nuclear disaster. In a bold move, the nuclear plant is reopening to exclusively sell power to Microsoft to aid the company's massive AI future. The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant signed a deal to revive the closed down Three Mile Island nuclear power plant with exclusive rights to 100 percent of the output in order to power its data center infrastructure. Once reopened, the plant can generate 837 megawatts of energy which Microsoft will use to fuel its AI strategy. [Related: 6 Big Google Cloud Execs Hires And Exits From AWS, Microsoft And CoreWeave] Bob Hollis, Microsoft's vice president of energy, said the agreement will help his company's sustainability efforts. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," said Hollis in a statement. "Microsoft continues to collaborate with energy providers to develop carbon-free energy sources to help meet the grids' capacity and reliability needs." If the project gets approved by regulators, the site will become operational in 2028. The deal would enable a restart of Unit 1 of the 50-year-old nuclear power facility that was shut in 2019 due to operational reasons. Unit 2 of the site, which was shut after a partial nuclear meltdown in 1979 is not going to be restarted. In 1999, Constellation Energy purchased the nuclear plant and operated the facility for 20 years. In its last year of operation, the plant was producing electricity at maximum capacity 96.3 percent of the time. The reactor that Constellation hopes to reopen can generate 837 megawatts of energy, enough to power more than 800,000 homes. Constellation will invest $1.6 billion to revive the plant and Microsoft will purchase power from the plant for 20 years. Microsoft has a goal to match the power its data centers consume in the area covered by the PJM regional energy transmission organization with carbon-free energy. Financial terms of the 20-year deal were not disclosed. "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 Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez in a statement. Dominguez said before the plant was shuttered it, "was among the safest and most reliable nuclear plants on the grid, and we look forward to bringing it back with a new name and a renewed mission to serve as an economic engine for Pennsylvania."

Nuclear plant to restart on Three Mile Island decades after worst disaster in US history

Dormant Pennsylvania site coming back online to meet AI software electricity needs Matt Oliver Industry Editor 20 September 2024 5:08pm A dormant power plant near the site of the worst US nuclear disaster in history is being brought back online to meet the massive electricity needs of AI software. A reactor in Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania - the site of a separate nuclear disaster - was shut down five years ago after it became uneconomic to run. But under the deal announced on Friday, it will be switched back on and run at full capacity for at least 20 years. Constellation Energy, a utility provider, said it aims to restart the reactor in 2028. Microsoft has agreed to consume all the power it generates. With about 837 megawatts (MW) of capacity, the site can generate enough electricity for 800,000 homes. The reactor sits next to another that was taken out of service 45 years ago after malfunctioning and suffering a partial meltdown, in what is regarded as the worst nuclear accident in US history. Three Mile Island suffered its infamous nuclear disaster in March 1979 when a combination of "equipment malfunctions, design-related problems and worker errors" led to the partial meltdown of the reactor known as Unit 2, according to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "This was the most serious accident in US commercial nuclear power plant operating history, although its small radioactive releases had no detectable health effects on plant workers or the public," the commission says on its website. "Its aftermath brought about sweeping changes involving emergency response planning, reactor operator training, human factors engineering, radiation protection and many other areas of nuclear power plant operations." The accident resulted in no deaths or injuries. Unit 2 is owned by Energy Solutions and is still being decommissioned. Constellation on Friday said that the reactor it was restarting as "a fully independent facility, and its long-term operation was not impacted by the Unit 2 accident". It marks the first time any US reactor has been restarted after decommissioning and the first time a single customer has agreed to buy a plant's entire output. The deal underscores the rapidly-growing demand for energy among Microsoft and other technology giants that are racing to develop ever-more-sophisticated AI software Many are looking at nuclear power to meet this demand thanks to its relatively high and dependable output. The fact it is free of carbon emissions also means companies are happy to describe it as "green" or "clean". Microsoft struck the deal at Three Mile Island as part of its efforts to become "carbon negative", by generating at least as much clean power as it consumes. Under the agreement, the site will be renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center. Joseph Dominguez, president and chief executive of Constellation Energy, said: "Powering industries critical to our nation's global economic and technological competitiveness, including data centres, 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. "Before it was prematurely shuttered due to poor economics, this plant was among the safest and most reliable nuclear plants on the grid, and we look forward to bringing it back with a new name and a renewed mission to serve as an economic engine for Pennsylvania." Top technology industry executives such as Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, and Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, have touted nuclear as a potential power source for the vast data centres needed to develop advanced AI models. Earlier this year, Amazon struck a separate deal to buy a data centre powered by the Susquehanna nuclear power plant, also in Pennsylvania, although that deal is facing a legal challenge. On Friday, Bobby Hollis, vice president of energy at Microsoft, said: "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonise the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative. "Microsoft continues to collaborate with energy providers to develop carbon-free energy sources to help meet the grids' capacity and reliability needs."

Nuclear plant Three Mile Island is reopening to power Microsoft AI's growing energy demands

In an unprecedented move that could be a game changer across the energy and technology sectors, Constellation Energy Corp. announced Friday it has signed a 20-year deal to supply Microsoft Corporation with nuclear power, reopening Three Mile Island, the site of the worst accident at a U.S. commercial nuclear power plant in American history. Shares in Constellation (Nasdaq: CEG) were up over 16% in midday trading. Microsoft and other tech giants have been struggling to meet the massive energy demands of artificial intelligence to power data centers, and have been increasingly looking at nuclear power as an alternative. The deal will give Microsoft a supply of carbon-free power around the clock for the next two decades.

Microsoft deal propels Three Mile Island restart, with key permits still needed

(Reuters) -Constellation Energy and Microsoft have signed a power deal to help resurrect a unit of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in what would be the first-ever restart of its kind, the companies said on Friday. Key regulatory permits for the plant's new life, however, haven't been filed, regulators say. Big tech has led to a sudden surge in U.S. electricity demand for data centers needed to expand technologies like artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Nuclear energy, which is nearly carbon-free and broadly considered more reliable than energy sources like solar and wind, has become a popular option for technology company's with uninterrupted power needs and climate pledges. "Nuclear plants are the only energy sources that can consistently deliver on that promise," Constellation Chief Executive Officer Joe Dominguez said in a statement. Constellation's shares were up more than 20% by early afternoon to $251.42 and have risen more than 100% so far this year. Power from the plant would be used to offset Microsoft's data center electricity use, the companies said. A relaunch of Three Mile Island, which had a separate unit suffer a partial-meltdown in 1979 in one of the biggest industrial accidents in the country's history, still requires federal, state and local approvals. Constellation has yet to file an application with federal nuclear regulators to restart the plant. "It's up to Constellation to lay out its rationale for justifying restart, so we're prepared to engage with the company on next steps," said Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) spokesperson Scott Burnell. Constellation said it expected the NRC review process to be completed in 2027. BILLION DOLLAR BET The deal would help enable a revival of Unit 1 of the five-decades-old facility in Pennsylvania that was retired in 2019 due to economic reasons. Unit 2, which had the meltdown, will not be restarted. Constellation plans to spend about $1.6 billion to revive the plant, which it expects to come online by 2028. Reuters first reported on the potential restart in July. Sources told Reuters at the time that Constellation hoped it would receive federal support for Three Mile Island that was similar to what was given to the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, which received a $1.5 billion conditional loan for a relaunch from the Biden administration. Under the Constellation-Microsoft deal, Microsoft will purchase energy from the restarted plant for a period of 20 years. The Three Mile Island unit will provide 835 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power about 700,000 homes. A restart is expected to be challenging, but as power demand spikes, the virtually carbon-free electricity source is seeing renewed support from tech companies. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," Bobby Hollis, vice president of energy at Microsoft, said in a statement. Microsoft has also signed a power purchase agreement with Washington-state fusion company Helion, which says the plant will be online by 2028, far earlier than many scientists say fusion will become commercial. Major tech executives, including ChatGPT developer OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, have touted nuclear energy as a solution to the growing power needs of data centers. Altman has backed and is the chairman of nuclear power startup Oklo, which went public through a blank-check merger in May, while TerraPower - a startup Gates co-founded - broke ground on a nuclear facility in June. Nuclear plants generated about 18.6% of the total electricity in the U.S. last year, according to Energy Information Administration data. The power supply deals with A.I. data centers are also facing increased scrutiny. A similar deal between Talen Energy and Amazon signed earlier this year has been challenged by a group of electric utilities alleging it could spike costs for customers or hamper grid reliability. Financial details of the Microsoft-Constellation deal were not disclosed. The companies declined to give more details on the agreement. (Reporting by Laila Kearney in New York, Mrinalika Roy and Sourasis Bose in Bengaluru, and Timothy Gardner in Washington; Editing by Janane Venkatraman, Sriraj Kalluvila and Nick Zieminski)

US nuclear plant Three Mile Island to reopen to power Microsoft

Washington (AFP) - Three Mile Island, the site of America's worst nuclear accident, will restart operations to provide power to Microsoft, Constellation Energy announced Friday. The 20-year agreement involves restarting Unit 1, which "operated at industry-leading levels of safety and reliability for decades before being shut down for economic reasons exactly five years ago," the company said in a statement. Unit 1 was not involved in the 1979 partial nuclear meltdown at the Pennsylvania site. Before its premature retirement in 2019, the plant could power over 800,000 average homes. Microsoft will use this energy to support power grids in the mid-Atlantic states around Washington DC, a region considered an internet crossroads. This area faces severe strain from data centers' massive energy consumption, raising concerns about grid stability as AI demands increase. Tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are rapidly expanding their data center capabilities to meet the AI revolution's computing and electricity needs. Microsoft told US media that Three Mile Island's nuclear energy will bolster grids for data center expansion in Chicago, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Many tech companies are betting on nuclear power's rapid development to meet AI's electricity demands. Amazon's AWS agreed in March to invest $650 million in a data center campus powered by another 40-year-old Pennsylvania nuclear plant, further highlighting tech companies' growing interest in nuclear energy. They are also interested in small modular reactors (SMRs), which are more compact and potentially easier to deploy. However, this technology is still in its infancy and lacks regulatory approval, leading companies to seek out existing nuclear power options. Constellation Energy expects the Three Mile Island reactor to go back online in 2028. Bobby Hollis, Microsoft's vice president of energy, called the agreement "a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative." The 1979 partial meltdown of Unit 2 at Three Mile Island caused panic in the United States and brought the deployment of nuclear energy to a standstill for a generation. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission deemed it the "most serious accident in US commercial nuclear power plant operating history," though it noted no detectable health effects on workers or the public from the small radioactive releases.

Three Mile Island nuclear plant will reopen to power Microsoft data centers

The Three Mile Island nuclear plant is seen in March 2011 in Middletown, Pa. Jeff Fusco/Getty Images hide caption Three Mile Island, the power plant near Middletown, Pa., that was the scene of the worst commercial nuclear accident in U.S. history, will reopen to power Microsoft's data centers, which are responsible for powering the tech giant's cloud computing and artificial intelligence programs. Constellation Energy, which bills itself as America's largest producer of "clean, carbon-free energy," announced Friday that it had signed its largest-ever power purchase agreement with Microsoft. "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, Constellation Energy's president and CEO. The deal will create approximately 3,400 jobs and bring in more than $3 billion in state and federal taxes, according to the company. It also said the agreement will add $16 billion to Pennsylvania's GDP. The agreement will span 20 years, and the plant is expected to reopen in 2028. It will be renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center in honor of Chris Crane, who died in April and served as the CEO of Constellation's former parent company. "Pennsylvania's nuclear energy industry plays a critical role in providing safe, reliable, carbon-free electricity that helps reduce emissions and grow Pennsylvania's economy," Gov. Josh Shapiro said. Unlike power plants using fossil fuels, like coal or natural gas, nuclear plants do not directly release carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming. The partial nuclear reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island happened on March 28, 1979, when one of the plant's two reactors' cooling mechanisms malfunctioned. The reactor that will be reopened to power Microsoft's data centers was not involved in the accident. "Before it was prematurely shuttered due to poor economics, this plant was among the safest and most reliable nuclear plants on the grid, and we look forward to bringing it back with a new name and a renewed mission to serve as an economic engine for Pennsylvania," Dominguez said. However, some state activists are worried that taxpayers would foot the bill for the plant's reopening, StateImpact Pennsylvania reported. "What would be a better investment for our money? That's the question we should be asking. We were told: let the marketplace decide. The market decided, and they decided it's not nuclear," said Eric Epstein of the watchdog group Three Mile Island Alert. Three Mile Island's working reactor was shut down in 2019, after a legislative effort to bail out the plant failed when it could not keep up with demand for other cheaper energy sources. Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates invested $1 billion in a nuclear power plant that broke ground in Kemmerer, Wyo., in June. The plant will power homes and AI, Gates told NPR's Steve Inskeep.

Three Mile Island, site of 1979 nuclear reactor accident, reopening to power AI

Three Mile Island, the shuttered Pennsylvania nuclear power plant that was the site of a 1979 reactor accident that remains the worst commercial nuclear power plant accident in U.S. history, is reopening to generate power for artificial intelligence. Constellation Energy will restart Three Mile Island Unit 1, one of the facility's pressurized water reactors, for the launch of the Crane Clean Energy Center, which will generate nuclear energy purchased by Microsoft to power the company's AI data center, the companies announced on Friday. Under the agreement between the two companies, Microsoft will purchase energy from the plant as part of its goal to help power its data centers with carbon-free energy. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative. Microsoft continues to collaborate with energy providers to develop carbon-free energy sources to help meet the grids' capacity and reliability needs," said Microsoft Vice President of Energy Bobby Hollis in a statement. The power purchase agreement "makes sense" because it ensures a stable revenue source for the power plant while providing 24/7 emission-free electricity for the data center, Jacopo Buongiorno, professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told ABC News. The move is also "further confirmation" of the economic and environmental value of using existing nuclear power plants to meet decarbonization goals in the U.S., Buongiorno said. "Since building a new nuclear power plant can be so time consuming and expensive, extending the license of current plants or refurbishing and restarting those that have been recently shutdown is a very attractive proposition," Buongiorno said via email. The Crane Clean Energy Center (CCEC) is expected to create 3,400 direct and indirect jobs and add more than 800 megawatts of carbon-free electricity to the grid, according to a study commissioned by the Pennsylvania Building & Construction Trades Council. "The CCEC will support thousands of family-sustaining jobs for decades to come," said Rob Bair, president of the Pennsylvania State Building and Construction Trades Council, in a statement. "It will help make Pennsylvania a leader in attracting and retaining the types of reliable, clean energy jobs that will define the future." Three Mile Island, located on the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was shuttered in 2019 for economic reasons, according to Constellation Energy. Owner Exelon Corp said in 2017 that the closing was due to lack of financial rescue from the state. On March 28, 1979, the Unit 2 reactor core at the Three Mile Island plant partially melted down when equipment malfunctions, compounded by human operator errors, caused a water pump failure that resulted in a loss of coolant to the reactor, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Unit 1 reactor is adjacent to Unit 2, which was shut down after the 1979 accident and is in the process of being decommissioned by its owner, Energy Solutions, according to Constellation Energy. Public support for the restart of Three Mile Island is strong, with residents favoring it by a more than 2-1 margin, as long as funding for the restart doesn't require increased taxes or electricity rates, according to a recent poll conducted by Susquehanna Polling & Research. The nuclear energy industry plays a "critical role" in providing safe and reliable carbon-free energy, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a statement. "My Administration will continue to work to cut energy costs and ensure the reliability of our energy grid so that Pennsylvanians can have access to affordable power made right here in Pennsylvania for years to come - and the Crane Clean Energy Center will help us achieve those goals," Shapiro said.

Microsoft Deal Will Reopen Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant to Power AI

Microsoft signed a deal to restart a nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania to power its rapidly expanding data centers for artificial intelligence computing, the companies said Friday. Microsoft will purchase energy from a plant known as TMI Unit 1, which shut down in 2019 for economic reasons. A separate reactor at the site partially melted down in a 1979 accident. The

Infamous Three Mile Island is back -- and Microsoft wants its...

Three Mile Island -- the infamous site of America's worst nuclear disaster -- is gearing up for a comeback, and tech giant Microsoft is first in line to tap into its energy. The tech giant signed a data center deal with Constellation Energy to help resurrect a unit of the nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in what would be the first-ever restart of its kind, the companies said on Friday. Microsoft locked in a 20-year deal to scoop up all the energy the revived reactor will generate, helping to fuel the company's growing need for electricity to power its AI growth. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. "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," said Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez in a statement. "Nuclear plants are the only energy sources that can consistently deliver on that promise." If the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gives the green light, the reactor will be back in action by 2028. The reopening is expected to create 3,400 jobs and pour $16 billion into the state's economy, according to Constellation. Plus, it'll add more than 800 megawatts of electricity to the grid, helping meet the growing demand for energy. Constellation shares surged nearly 15% in morning trading. Microsoft stock ticked down less than 1%. Big tech has led to a sudden surge in US electricity demand for data-centers needed to expand technologies like artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Nuclear energy, which is nearly carbon-free and broadly considered more reliable than energy sources like solar and wind, has become a popular option for technology company's with uninterrupted power needs and climate pledges. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," Microsoft VP of energy Bobby Hollis said. But not everyone's cheering. Environmental groups have been blasting nuclear energy for decades, mainly over concerns about radioactive waste. The US still doesn't have a permanent home for its nuclear leftovers, which are piling up at more than 70 plants across the country. Despite the controversy, nuclear energy is gaining steam as a reliable power source, especially as wind and solar face limitations. While Unit 1 is gearing up for a reboot, its neighbor -- Unit 2 -- has been permanently shut since 1979, following the meltdown that made Three Mile Island a household name.

Microsoft strikes deal to reopen Three Mile Island nuclear plant

Nuclear energy operator Constellation Energy will reopen the Three Mile Island facility in Pennsylvania, the site of a 1979 partial nuclear meltdown, as part of a deal with Microsoft to power data centers. In the announcement Friday, Constellation said Microsoft has agreed to buy 20 years' worth of power from the operator beginning in 2028. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission must review and approve the decision before the plant reactor can be restarted. The agreement involves the plant's second reactor, which was unaffected by the 1979 accident and continued to operate for decades after. The 1979 partial meltdown was the worst in the history of U.S. commercial nuclear generation and, although it did not cause any deaths, exacerbated public concerns around the safety of nuclear power, along with the much costlier and deadlier Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union seven years later. The plant was retired due to declining revenues in 2019. "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," Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez said in a statement. "Before it was prematurely shuttered due to poor economics, this plant was among the safest and most reliable nuclear plants on the grid, and we look forward to bringing it back with a new name and a renewed mission to serve as an economic engine for Pennsylvania," he added. The announcement comes as part of a broader renaissance in commercial nuclear power as lingering Cold War-era anxieties have given way to demand for reliable carbon-free sources of power. That demand is particularly acute in the case of artificial intelligence data centers, which currently comprise up to 1.5 percent of electricity use worldwide, according to an analysis by the International Energy Agency.

Three Mile Island nuclear site to reopen in Microsoft deal

The agreement is intended to provide the company with a clean source of energy as power-hungry data centres for artificial intelligence (AI) expand. The owner of the plant, Constellation Energy, said the reactor it planned to restart was next to, but "fully independent" of, the unit that had been involved in the 1979 accident. It caused no injuries or deaths but provoked widespread fear and mistrust among the US public, discouraging the development of nuclear power in the US for decades. However, there is renewed interest in nuclear as concerns about climate change grow - and companies need more energy due to advances in artificial intelligence. Constellation chief executive Joe Dominguez told analysts on Friday that the deal was a "powerful symbol of the rebirth of nuclear power as a clean and reliable energy resource". "Before it was prematurely shuttered due to poor economics, this plant was among the safest and most reliable nuclear plants on the grid, and we look forward to bringing it back with a new name and a renewed mission," he said in a statement announcing the deal. He said nuclear plants were the "only energy sources" that could consistently deliver an "abundance" of carbon-free energy. Microsoft also called it a "milestone" in its efforts to "help decarbonize the grid".

Constellation to restart Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Microsoft AI power deal

This would be the first ever restart of a nuclear power plant in the U.S. after shutting, and shows how utilities are benefiting from a massive surge in demand from data-center operators looking to ride a boom in artificial intelligence. Shares of the company were up nearly 8% at $224.4 premarket. The deal would enable a restart of Unit 1 of the five-decades-old nuclear power facility in Pennsylvania that was shut in 2019 due to operational reasons. Unit 2, which was shut after a partial meltdown in 1979 - the most famous commercial nuclear accident in U.S. history - is not going to be restarted. Constellation, which plans to spend about $1.6 billion to restart the plant, is awaiting permits and expects the facility to come online by 2028. Under the deal, disclosed on Friday, Microsoft will purchase energy from the restarted plant for a period of 20 years. Reuters first reported on the potential restart in July. A restart is expected to be logistically challenging, but as power demand increases from tech companies, the virtually carbon-free electricity source is seeing renewed support. If the restart is approved, Three Mile Island would provide Microsoft with 835 megawatts of energy. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Microsoft and Constellation declined to give more details on the agreement.

Three Mile Island nuclear plant will reopen to power Microsoft data centers - SiliconANGLE

Three Mile Island nuclear plant will reopen to power Microsoft data centers The operator of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant will reopen the facility to generate electricity for Microsoft Corp. data centers. Constellation Energy Generation LLC, the largest renewable energy producer in the U.S., announced the initiative today. The company will supply power from Three Mile Island to Microsoft under a newly signed 20-year contract. Before reopening the plant, Constellation will carry out wide-ranging renovations and secure fresh regulatory approvals. The company plans to supply Microsoft with power from the Three Mile Island plant's Unit 1 reactor. Unit 2, a reactor housed in an immediately adjacent facility, experienced a partial nuclear meltdown in 1979. The incident was the worst nuclear power plant accident in U.S. history. The Unit 1 reactor earmarked for Microsoft was not affected by the accident. The system continued operating until 2019, when Constellation retired it "prematurely for economic reasons." The company's new 20-year deal with Microsoft will see the facility that houses Unit 1 reopen as the Crane Clean Energy Center. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," said Bobby Hollis, Microsoft's vice president of energy. "Microsoft continues to collaborate with energy providers to develop carbon-free energy sources to help meet the grids' capacity and reliability needs." According to Bloomberg, Constellation will spend $1.6 billion to renovate the Three Mile Island plant. The company plans to upgrade the facility's cooling and control systems as well as its turbine, generator and main power transformer. The upgrade will be followed by a safety and environmental review. Before it reopens, the Crane Clean Energy Center will have to be approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Constellation will also require permits from state and local agencies. The reopening is expected to be supported by tax credits and other federal subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act. Constellation plans to bring the plant online in 2028. The facility is expected to generate 835,000 megawatts of electricity, which is enough to power more than 800,000 homes. Constellation hopes to operate it through at least 2054. The plant will help Microsoft meet the growing power requirements of its cloud data centers. The facilities' rising electricity usage is driven in part by the large number of graphics processing units that they host. Microsoft reportedly hopes to deploy 1.4 million GPUs in its data center network by year's end. It's estimated that Nvidia Corp.'s H100 graphics card, which was its flagship data center chip until last year, consumes more than 3,700 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. That's equivalent to a low double-digit percentage of a typical home's annual power usage. The successor to the H100, the Blackwell B200, consumes even more power. Alongside Nvidia chips, Microsoft is deploying internally designed artificial intelligence chips in its data centers. The company uses liquid cooling technology to dissipate the heat generated by those processors. Microsoft has developed custom cooling systems, dubbed sidekicks by its engineers, that can attach directly to a server rack and circulate cold liquid through the hardware inside.

Microsoft Deal Will Bring Nuclear Power Back to Three Mile Island

A nuclear power plant at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island will be recommissioned thanks to a power purchase deal with Microsoft aimed at offsetting the tech giant's carbon emissions. Three Mile Island Unit 1, owned by Constellation Energy, has been offline for five years and is not the reactor responsible for the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, which occurred in another reactor at the same location in 1979. The deal, announced by Constellation on Friday, comes as the tech industry is under increasing pressure to justify the energy demands and carbon emissions of data centers powering the artificial intelligence boom. Microsoft's environmental impact has come under particular criticism in recent days. Earlier this week, The Guardian reported that it and several other tech giants were severely underestimating the carbon emissions caused by their data centers. According to the paper, Microsoft's data centers were responsible for between 280,782 metric tons and 6.1 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions in 2022, depending on the accounting method used. Last week, The Atlantic reported that despite Microsoft's publicly stated goal of becoming carbon-negative and promises that its AI is helping to avert environmental crises, the company has been furnishing some of the world's largest fossil fuel companies with AI tools designed to help locate new reserves of oil and gas. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," Bobby Hollis, vice president of energy at Microsoft, said in a statement included in Constellation's announcement. "Microsoft continues to collaborate with energy providers to develop carbon-free energy sources to help meet the grids' capacity and reliability needs." Before it was shut down for economic reasons in 2019, the Three Mile Island Reactor, which will be renamed Crane Clean Energy Center, had a generating capacity of 837 megawatts, enough to power 800,000 homes, Constellation said. The reactor is expected to go back online in 2028 and Microsoft has agreed to a 20-year power purchase agreement. In March 1979 a cooling malfunction and series of equipment failures at Three Mile Island's Reactor 2 caused the core to melt, forcing operators to vent radioactive gas and raising fears of a pending explosion. While no one was hurt as a result of the accident, it ignited decades of distrust in nuclear power across the country.

Power Company Plans To Restart Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant

It's part of a 20-year agreement to provide Microsoft with the massive energy needed to power its artificial intelligence aims Constellation Energy said it will restart a unit at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, the site of a partial nuclear meltdown in 1979, as part of a 20-year deal to provide energy to Microsoft's data centers for the tech giant's push into artificial intelligence, the company said Friday. The Baltimore-based company said it would restart unit 1, which was undamaged in the accident but closed five years ago for economic and operational reasons, making a $1.6 billion investment to the plant's turbine, generator, power transformer and cooling and control systems. Constellation said it plans to have the plant running by 2028 after gaining approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other state and local agencies. "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," Joe Dominguez, president and CEO of Constellation, said in a statement on Friday. Unit 1 sits next to the reactor that was shuttered after the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. Constellation said the unit has the capacity to generate 837 megawatts, enough to power more than 800,000 average homes. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative. Microsoft continues to collaborate with energy providers to develop carbon-free energy sources to help meet the grids' capacity and reliability needs," said Bobby Hollis, vice president of energy for Microsoft.

Infamous US nuclear site Three Mile Island to reopen in deal with Microsoft | BreakingNews.ie

The owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island US nuclear power plant said 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 centres with carbon-free energy. The announcement by Constellation Energy on Friday comes five years after its then-parent company Exelon shut down the plant, saying it was losing money and that Pennsylvania legislators had refused to subsidise 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 centres. 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 would not say which of its data centres will be powered by the nuclear plant, but the mid-Atlantic electricity grid spans from Virginia, a data centre hub for Microsoft and other tech giants, to Ohio where Microsoft has plans for a new data centre complex outside Columbus. Constellation said it hopes to bring Unit 1 online in 2028. Restarting the reactor will require approval from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as well as permits from state and local agencies, Constellation said. To restart Unit 1, Constellation will spend 1.6 billion dollars (£1.2 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 did not release terms of their agreement. Jacopo Buongiorno, a nuclear science and engineering professor and director of MIT's Centre 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, Mr Buongiorno said. "It all depends on what's the state of the components, the systems," he said. The process will go fairly smoothly if they were maintained well while it was shut down, Mr Buongiorno said. A Constellation spokesperson said the plant itself is in excellent condition. Constellation's announcement comes after a wave of coal-fired and nuclear power plants have shut down in the past decade as competition from cheap natural gas flooded power markets. That has elicited warnings that the US is facing an electric reliability crisis. Meanwhile, demand is fast-growing from data centres run by tech giants like Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Google to provide cloud computing and digital services such as artificial intelligence systems. The Constellation-Microsoft agreement also comes amid a push by the Biden administration, states and utilities to reconsider using nuclear power to try to limit plant-warming greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector. Last year, Georgia Power began producing electricity from the first American nuclear reactor to be built in decades, after the accident at Three Mile Island froze interest in building new ones. Before it was shut down in 2019, Three Mile Island's Unit 1 had a generating capacity of 837 megawatts, which is enough to power more than 800,000 homes, Constellation said. The destroyed Unit 2 is sealed, and its twin cooling towers remain standing. Its core was shipped years ago to the US Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory. What is left inside the containment building remains highly radioactive and encased in concrete.

Constellation Energy to restart Three Mile Island nuclear plant, sell the power to Microsoft for AI

Norma Field walks under power lines coming off of the nuclear plant on Three Mile Island (TMI), with the operational plant run by Exelon Generation, in Middletown, Pennsylvania. Constellation Energy plans to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant and will sell the power to Microsoft, the companies announced on Friday. Constellation expects the Unit 1 reactor at Three Mile Island to come back online in 2028, subject to approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Unit 1 ceased operations in 2019 and is separate from the reactor that partially melted down in 1979 in the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. Microsoft will purchase electricity from the plant to match the energy its data centers consume with carbon-free power.