Audrey Streb
DCNF Energy Reporter
The Department of Energy (DOE) announced Tuesday that it will loan Constellation Energy around $1 billion to restart one of Three Mile Island’s reactors in Pennsylvania.
Unit 1 at Three Mile Island was shut down in 2019 but never fully decommissioned. Constellation Energy is now working to restart the reactor in 2027 under its new name, the “Crane Clean Energy Center.” The loan will be issued through the DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO), which Energy Secretary Chris Wright said last week will largely finance nuclear projects under the Trump administration.
“One of the biggest challenges American people [have] faced over the last several years has been the rising price of electricity,” Wright told reporters Tuesday. “We want to bring as much net addition of dispatchable, reliable electricity onto the grid to stop these price rises in electricity and increase American capacity to generate reliable electricity, so we can reshore manufacturing in our country, and we can stay ahead in the AI race.” (RELATED: Big Tech Zapping Nuclear Plant Back To Life As Energy Demand Soars)
Wright noted the reactor was shuttered prematurely six years ago and that bringing Crane back online is expected to add nearly a gigawatt of “new firm, reliable generation” to the grid, backed by a Constellation “parent guarantee” to protect taxpayers. The DOE said the reactor will be operational in 2027 and require only 600 to 700 workers to restart.
The agency issued emergency orders to keep coal plants running while also advancing nuclear development in line with President Donald Trump’s directives. The DOE has sounded the alarm over America’s energy crisis, with one July report projecting that rolling blackouts could increase by a factor of 100 by 2030 if the U.S. continues to phase out reliable energy sources without adequate replacements.
Wright told reporters Tuesday that under the Biden administration, “there were plans to close 100 gigawatts more of affordable, reliable, secure, dispatchable electricity generation, mostly coal, but also natural gas.”
“This is exactly what America needs,” Wright said, noting the DOE is “constantly looking for ways to rapidly expand firm, reliable generating capacity.”
While the Biden administration aggressively promoted intermittent energy sources like wind and solar through billions in subsidies, loans and grants, the Trump administration has prioritized conventional energy sources like coal and expanded support for nuclear innovation. American energy demand is rising for the first time in decades, driven by increased onshore manufacturing, widespread electrification and the growth of artificial intelligence data centers, according to the Energy Information Administration and the Institute for Energy Research.
LPO’s Senior Advisor Greg Beard told reporters Tuesday that the agency is looking for other nuclear power plant restart opportunities.
“If you have a large project that will help make American energy more affordable, reliable or secure, we are active and in business to support those projects and those companies,” Beard said.
Constellation has been working to restart the reactor since September 2024, with President and CEO Joe Dominguez arguing that Unit 1’s closure “symbolized more than a decade of policy failures that focused only on new clean energy resources that couldn’t match the reliability of nuclear energy, and both the security of our energy grid and air quality suffered.”
Beard believes Constellation could have accomplished the feat without the DOE’s help, though the loan will “lower the cost of capital and make power cheaper for those PJM ratepayers.”
PJM runs the grid for all or parts of 13 states and Washington, D.C., and has drawn scrutiny as ratepayers grapple with high utility costs. Regional politicians have tried to hoist the blame on the grid operator despite their own moves to retire reliable power plants in recent years.
“The Trump administration is highly focused on restarting the nuclear energy industry in the United States safely,” Wright said, pointing out that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission continues to play a central role in ensuring the safety of U.S. nuclear operations. “We want to get rid of the bureaucracy and focus on what are the critical issues that make reactors safe.”
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Wait. Wasnt that the one Gates is involved in? Then his (partial) change on the climate issue kinda ties in..
On second thought: the subtitle says ‘ not THAT one.’
Rebrand it Green Mile Island, pin a solar panel above the entrance, and everybody should be fine with it – except for some jailbirds.
It’s good economic strategy to restart Three Mile Island Unit 1. but there is an additional problem. In 2019 the price of uranium, as U3O8 (yellowcake), was $25 per pound, and now it is $76 per pound. The domestic production needs to be relieved from regulatory obstruction. Nuke’m!
A nuclear reactor is refueled every 18-24 months (replacing a third of its core) at a cost of $40 million.
—Source: NEI
LCOE for new nuclear plants is estimated to be between $80 and $95 per megawatt-hour ($0.08 to $0.095 per kWh)
— Source: International Energy Agency (IEA)
So for a conservative 24-months of continuous operation of a modern 1 GW nuclear reactor, the cost of reactor-ready new fuel is, yeah, about 3% of the life-cycle levelized cost of operating the plant.
+1 to that, Raw uranium prices are simply irrelevant,
I do wonder how much the sale of 20 percent of the uranium production capacity in the U.S. to Russia, i.e., Uranium One to Rosatom back in 2010-2013, has effected the today’s price of yellow cake.
From the article: “under its new name, the “Crane Clean Energy Center.”
I like it!
Climate Alarmists say they want Clean Energy. Well, there you go! It’s time for a celebration, isn’t it?
‘I like it!’
So would George Orwell. Fyi, it’s named after the guy who unashamedly invoked climate alarmism to call for the closure of coal-, oil-, and gas-fired generation, while demanding capacity subsidies for nukes impaired by subsidized wind and solar.
I was only focused on the “clean” part of the name. 🙂
From the article: ““One of the biggest challenges American people [have] faced over the last several years has been the rising price of electricity,” Wright told reporters Tuesday. “We want to bring as much net addition of dispatchable, reliable electricity onto the grid to stop these price rises in electricity and increase American capacity to generate reliable electricity, so we can reshore manufacturing in our country, and we can stay ahead in the AI race.”
No mention of unreliable windmills and industrial solar.
The United States needs reliable electricity. Windmills and Solar don’t make the grade.
From the article: “The DOE has sounded the alarm over America’s energy crisis, with one July report projecting that rolling blackouts could increase by a factor of 100 by 2030 if the U.S. continues to phase out reliable energy sources without adequate replacements.”
In the past, we never had to worry about blackouts before the Climate Alarmists starting putting windmills and industrial solar on our electrical grids.
After the addition of windmills and solar, we have blackout warnings all the time.
If we don’t want blackouts, we should scrap the windmills and industrial solar and build reliable power generation facilities that use coal, natural gas and nuclear.
Jumping through hoops to accommodate windmills and solar is just plain crazy and dangerous.
From the article: “PJM runs the grid for all or parts of 13 states and Washington, D.C., and has drawn scrutiny [anger]as ratepayers grapple with high utility costs. Regional politicians have tried to hoist the blame on the grid operator despite their own moves to retire reliable power plants in recent years.”
Retiring reliable power plants is what has caused the problems with the electrical grids of the United States. It has caused both grid unreliability and it has increased the costs of electricity. Obama, and after him, Biden were closing all the reliable electricity generating plants and replacing them with unreliable windmills and industrial solar. They, and their delusional thinking, are the cause of our current grid/cost problems.
We should be doing just the opposite of this. We should be building more reliable generators and scrap the unreliable windmills and solar.
I don’t know if Trump will be scrapping any windmills or solar, but I’ll bet he won’t be promoting any new windmills or solar.
Give “retired” coal plants and nuclear plants low-interest federal loans so they can be quickly restarted!
Some of those plants have been leveled to the ground. There is no quick restart.
The grid to these plants is still in place
The grid isn’t worth a plugged nickel without a generating unit to feed into it.
Holy Crony Capitalism! While I’m pleased to see TMI_1 restarted, the author could have performed a modicum of research and traced the lineage of Constellation back to Exelon, which lobbied tirelessly to deep-six its coal and gas fired competitors under the premise of climate alarmism.
Once upon a time, Exelon (under a leader who is long-since gone) was a proponent and advocate of next-generation nuclear technology. This was a long time ago (circa 2001) in a corporation far, far away.
All wind and solar systems must stand on their own, no subsidies state and federal, and must have their own balancing plants to provide constant output, on a less than minute by minute basis, 24/7/365
That’s the only way they should be added to the grid.
But I don’t think windmills and industrial solar are economically viable that way. The only way they stay in business is from government subsidies. Take that away and they cannot be justified economically.
I favor taking all subsidies away from unreliable power generation (windmills and solar). 🙂
BS Tom! Nick tells us all the time they are cheapest…fuel is free 😉
‘No subsidies’ should also mean that they need to ‘bid’ their energy into the day-ahead market if they want to sell energy. I’d like to see how their bids might compare to their so-called LCOE rates if they knew they’d be at the mercy of some clapped-out peaking unit in the real-time market whenever the sun or wind failed to shine or blow, respectively.
ISONE is letting wind and solar bid MWs for very short times, which qualifies them for payments. Pure shenanigans
Sounds right. There are NO Republicans among NE’s Congressional delegation despite the fact that 30-40% of the population of NE votes Republican.
It’s high time we outlaw small intermittent power sources connecting to the grid. The grid was and is designed for large reliable sources of electricity. People can generate electricity off-grid any way they want for their own uses. But any source connected to the grid should have a requirement to be available at all times to balance the needs of the current loads.
“It’s high time we outlaw small intermittent power sources connecting to the grid.”
Exactly right.
And Germany and the UK should do the same before they bankrupt themselves.
The Department of Energy (DOE) “loaning” Constellation Energy around $1 billion to “restart” Unit 1 at Three Mile Island, which was shut down in 2019 . . . shades of Solyndra!
Unit 1 at Three Mile Island was shut down in 2019 but never fully decommissioned.
However, here’s what not mentioned in the above fluff article:
— TMI Unit 1 construction began on May 18, 1968, and
— TMI Unit 1 was commissioned operational on September 2, 1974.
So, we’re talking about (a) a nuclear reactor and its containment structure that are at least 2025-1974) = 51 years old, and (b) its control systems, its plumbing and its power generation loop components (pumps, turbines, valves, transformers, wiring, etc) that are a least 2025-2019 = 8 years old, with much of this infrastructure likely also being around 51 years old.
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 technical and safety reviews 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 “restarted”, hah!.
And how about considering this? The nuclear reactor structure (pressure vessel, control rods, nearby plumbing, valves, and related safety mechanisms) are almost certain to still be radioactive to the extent that any visual and X-ray/n-ray inspections—let alone refurbishment or repairs—of such will be considered as hazardous operations for humans . . and imagine the risks of such not being performed . . . 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 57 years (1968 to 2025), or the last 8 years if you start counting at 2019, when Unit 1 was finally shut down. Ka-ching!
My bet is that Constellation Energy will have to scrap the existing, 51-plus-years-old TMI Unit 1 nuclear reactor and replace it, as well as its control and safety mechanisms, with a modern nuclear reactor, and where the radioactive waste of doing so ends up is anybody’s guess. There goes $1 billion or so.
As for Constellation’s “parent guarantee” to protect taxpayers, it’s probably worth the value of the paper that it’s written on (or alternatively the cost of the electrons used to store it in digital form somewhere).
Why didn’t Constellation Energy get such a loan from one of its previously-announced major customers for electricity from the restarted TMI Unit 1, such as Microsoft? . . . oh, wait, sorry, the answer to that is quite obvious after all. /sarc
And what happens to this “loan” after the company goes TU?
Solyndra has shown us the path. BOHICA!
If it’s economically sound…why can’t they borrow the money from a bank ?
The banks able to to lend $1 billion have a staff of analysts smart enough to see an unacceptably risky deal BEFORE it bites them in the rear end!
The Federal government doesn’t care so much because it’s only giving away taxpayer money . . . and there’s more where that came from.
More good news more important is the need to put an end to the needless roadblocks the energy businesses must contend with. If a design has been approved and the environmental impact study has been approved get busy building. Wind and solar excepted because they don’t work.
I’m confused. Microsoft has an agreement with Constellation to buy all of the Unit 1 output. This was agreed to in September of 2024. I assume when the agreement was signed that Constellation had a financial plan for reopening. If so, why would DoE loan money to Constellation to reopen Unit 1 when all of the power is going to Microsoft?
My understanding was that Microsoft was putting money into the restart.
And undo Hillary’s border wall against pipelines…
Enbridge $1.4 Billion Project Aims to Boost Canadian Oil Flow to U.S. Refineries — Commodities Roundup | MarketScreener