Owen Klinsky
Contributor
A shuttered nuclear power plant with a checkered past will partially be coming back online after Microsoft obtained a deal to purchase energy from one of the plant’s reactors, according to a Friday press release.
The 20-year power purchase agreement, which the tech giant secured with Constellation Energy, would bring back the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania — the site of a 1979 meltdown that resulted in a large-scale evacuation of nearby pregnant women and school-age children. The project aims to provide power for Microsoft data centers as tech companies push to expand electricity production to support their artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud storage needs, the release says. (RELATED: Biden-Harris Admin’s Multi-Billion Dollar Electric School Bus Program Is A Huge Gift To China, House Report Finds)
“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, stated in the release alongside Microsoft. “We look forward to bringing [the Three Mile Island plant] back with a new name and a renewed mission to serve as an economic engine for Pennsylvania.”
The agreement would bring back Unit 1 at Three Mile Island, which was shuttered in 2019 for “economic reasons,” according to Constellation’s statement. Unit 1 is adjacent to the Unit 2 reactor that caused the worst nuclear meltdown in U.S. history on March 28, 1979, which results in 40% of people evacuating the area.
The Three Mile Island power plant will have a capacity of 835 megawatts, enough to power more than 700,000 homes. It is expected to create 3,400 direct and indirect jobs, according to the press release.
The decision to reopen the Three Mile Island reactor comes as tech companies are increasingly looking to nuclear energy to power their AI and data center needs, with Amazon Web Services spending $650 million on a nuclear-powered data center in Pennsylvania earlier this year. The trend could affect power grid reliability and affordability as it provides the businesses with “first dibs” on electricity, Pennsylvania Consumer Advocate Patrick Cicero told the WSJ in July.
Nuclear power has aroused public suspicion, largely due to incidents like Three Mile Island, Fukushima and Chernobyl, in which reactor meltdowns caused radiation to flood areas surrounding nuclear power plants. However, it could be a viable pathway to reducing emissions and accomplishing the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of having the U.S. power sector reach net-zero emissions by 2035.
“This is a valuable opportunity to invest in clean, carbon-free and affordable power — on the heels of the hottest year in Earth’s history,” Pennsylvania state Rep. Tom Mehaffie said in the Constellation press release. “This will transform the local economy and presents a rare opportunity to power our economy with reliable clean energy that we can count on.”
Constellation and Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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“Renewables” are better described as “weather dependent”.
What on earth has happened to Germany? There’s a wonderful article at Politico on their recent decline.
If Microsoft will be maintaining the control systems software, and they announce an update is scheduled,
run for your lives!!!
Whenever the media describes the reactor accident at Three Mile Island, they always cite the (temporary) evacuation of nearby residents, but they ALWAYS leave out the part that not a single resident in the TMI area was ever actually exposed to any excessive radioactive contamination.
None, zip, nada.
Windmills and solar cells have killed a helluva lot more than the zero citizens killed by nuclear power plants in more than 60 years of commercial operations.
story tip
Scientists have captured Earth’s climate over the last 485 million years. Here’s the surprising place we stand now.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/09/19/earth-temperature-global-warming-planet/
hmmmm…. seems like they drew one conclusion when they could have drawn a better one.
shuttered in 2019 for “economic reasons”
Why is it profitable in 2024? Offshore wind? There was no AI in 2019. Microsoft AI needs as much power as 700,000 homes.
There you have it…Bill Gates knows that nuclear is the best path to reducing the carbon footprint of his data centers…or more likely, his projected least cost way of assuring reliable electricity for his ventures. After all, politician controlled utilities seem to be spiralling down a path of controlled blackouts….
From the above article:
“The agreement would bring back Unit 1 at Three Mile Island, which was shuttered in 2019 for ‘economic reasons,’ according to Constellation’s statement.”
That has got to be the most laughable statement of the year!
How about “the agreement and several billion USD and a new approved EIS” would bring it back.
The nuclear reactors at Three Mile Island were designed in the early 1960s, and construction of Unit 1 began in May 1968. We’re looking at designs, materials and safety standards that were used more than 55 years ago!
I highly doubt any existing Unit 1 plant equipment, from the reactor itself to its associated plumbing to its control electrical wiring and electronics to its safety systems would pass review so as to be usable “as-is” while still meeting the latest codes governing nuclear power plants . . . well, maybe the cooling tower could still be used (hah!). Therefore, Constellation Energy is facing the massive cost of essentially rebuilding the entire power plant internal to the existing buildings. Ka-ching!
On top of that, a new environmental impact statement (EIS) will definitely be required due to changes in the surrounding communities and due to more rigorous standards for such statements that have taken place over the last 55 years. Ka-ching! . . . and that alone could be a show-stopper.
Finally, think of the flak that local politicians in Harrisburg/Londonderry Township, as well as politicians in Pennsylvania, will draw if they support a nuclear power plant reopening for the sole purpose of supplying electricity to Microsoft for their “artificial intelligence and cloud storage needs”.
Bottom line: IMHO, this planned “restarting” of Unit 1 has a one-in-a-million chance of actually happening.
To put the TMI accident into perspective, although TMI-2 reactor was destroyed and some radioactive gas was released a couple of days after the accident, it was not enough to cause any dose above background levels to local residents. There were no injuries or adverse health effects from the Three Mile Island accident to anyone. Nuclear power is the cleanest, safest and most reliable method of electricity generation man has ever invented. Excessive fear of radiation exposure has strangled the development of nuclear energy in the U.S. to our detriment in terms of economic, health and and environmental impacts. No other source of energy is capable of providing the amounts of energy needed by an advanced modern society with fewer negative impacts than nuclear power.
Few people understand that radiation and radioactive elements are part of the natural environment. Natural background radiation exposure that everyone receives is far greater than the almost immeasurably small amount contributed by nuclear plant operations. On average airline long-haul flight crews receive more radiation exposure in a year than nuclear power workers.
It’s incorrect to assert that Three Mile Island “caused radiation to flood areas surrounding nuclear power plants” like Fukushima and Chernobyl.
So a corporation can convince government to utilize nuclear power? I hope this restart and the delayed shut down of Diablo Canyon in California preview a shift in nuclear thinking.
So … Microsoft needs nuclear to power the AI that tells the rest of we need to get our power from Wind and Solar?
Why is 3-MIle Island “infamous”? Nothing significant happened outside the containment building. Mostly inside the unbreached pressure vessel.
When UNIT 2 partial melt-down occurred the containment systems worked as required. Chernobyl, the only meltdown with major radiation leaks, did not have any containment – so cannot be compared with a commercial reactor built to appropriate standards of a responsible government. And doses for evacuation were set at 6mSv pa, more than 100 times less than natural levels elsewhere in the world – although the local effect were bad because no iodine pills were issued and people were not warned not to drink local milk, so a lot of I-131 was igested, although the long term effects of this for the 6,000 cases where estimated at 50 deaths long term. Added to the 30 first responders that’s 50 deaths altogether. See UNSCEAR report on Chernobyl.
The containment worked at 3-MIle Island so there was no significant radiation release, even the meltdown was partial (the exposed top section?) and the core remained within the pressure vessel, where it could quietly decay to zero, if left.
The only radiation leaks were gases that can pass through particulate HEPA filters, but these had short half lives and carried no significant radiation risk. See link. The authorities actually cleaned it up over 10 years and transferred the fuel into storage designed for high level waste. So they could also have safely replaced the nuclear boiler with another.
“Readings were far below health limits” .
And those limits are far too low for political reasons, they make nuclear power much more expensive that it need be to feed an army of jobsworth bureaucrats, many of whom don’t understand the science behind what they measure, the radiation or the health physics. They are just tech Policeman, with meters, rules, hazmat suits, power and no idea.
The radiation protection racket justifies large government budgets and provides safe bureaucratic jobs managing a mostly non-problem with few real risks. So that safe seat bureaucracy won’t acknowledge the science developed after safe levels were decided on a guess – that has been proved wildly wrong at low dose levels. These were guessed by extrapolating atom bomb radiation effects by eight factors of ten downwards. Hardly an error free guess when animals, then people, evolved in higher radiation levels than now, and we now know from better science that Nature doesn’t work as they guessed, also see Climate models, but they have jobs to keep. And people are ignorant AND irrational and been made scared by the media, so the pencil necks jobs are safe. For now. The Health Physicists, who do know the facts, point out the problem, but the protection racket officials don’t want to know, or to save the public money by declaring the safe levels to be significantly higher, when they have well paid phoney baloney government jobs to protect by enforcing the hard to meet lower levels, with bogus rules.
FACT: LTN is completely wrong at low levels below 1Sievert pa. 1,000mSv pa. Safe level is set at 2mSv pa.
We now know exposure at up to 400/FOUR HUNDRED times the supposed safe level occurs naturally around the world, highest on resort beaches of Brazil, with no epidemiological evidence of consequential cancers/illness.
The other “infamous” unit 3MI 1 kept working safely for 40 years feeding the grid 24/7. Reasons given for 2019 closure were the money, which makes little sense unless an upgrade or major shutdown was due. Marginal cost of power from a nuclear reactor is very low as the fuel cost is a very small. Main cost is CAPEX. Shutdowns for tests and replacements to grant safe life extension may have been due. That can be pricey. But Microsoft can fund that from the lifetime savings on the cheapest energy that it can get over the extended life, if it’s a private deal outside of all the government energy taxes and subsidy rackets imposed on nuclear power distributed on the grid, to make other modalities look better.
The £MI name problem is probably fixed most cheaply as they already have, using the Windscale approach.
Change the name and carry on. Enough for the three second memory politicians of minimal factual processing power to forgetaboutit. Soprano style.
The real problem with nuclear is not the realities of the safety management, which rational and educated engineers have learnt how to do in Gen3. It is the abysmally ignorant and too stupid to learn Arts graduate media parroting the ignorant and stupid self serving liars who hold elected office in America, who are not interested in the technical realities they are also not educated to understand, and most prefer too arrogant to try.
They don’t grasp the basic physics necessary to test the key decisions that any energy dependent developed economy in a competitive World must get right to continue to stay developed, so are wholly inadequate to make those decisions. Story Tip?
Reading the announcement details, the Microsoft data center will be obtaining its power through a connection to the local power grid, not through a direct connection to the TMI power plant itself.
Which means that TMI’s power will be available to other electricity consumers attached to the PJM regional grid if the need arises.
Microsoft and all the other big names in AI have all said unequivocally they expect the power utilities to take on all the financial and business risk of building the new generation capacity needed to support AI requirements.
These AI firms will sign power purchase agreements with the power utilities. But that is as far as they will go. These firms will not build new power plants themselves, nor they will they take the risk of directly financing part or all of a new power plant being constructed by a power utility.
Which means that Constellation and possibly PJM’s current ratepayers will effectively be covering the expense of bringing TMI back on line in the hope that the need for TMI’s power actually materializes.
Just what the doctor ordered – global tech companies controlling our national electric grid. That will turn out well. Sigh…
More good news.
Indirectly or perhaps directly Microsoft knows that with these energy hungry data centers and now supposedly AI, wind and solar will not cut it. Their business model in these areas require reliable energy not weather dependent unreliable, intermittent “green energy.”