In 1979, a partial meltdown of a nuclear power plant located at Three Mile Island (TMI contributed to a nationwide slowdown of new reactor construction and forced regulators to tighten safety requirements.
Following WWII and before the incident, nuclear power was considered the future of energy.
TMI’s Unit 1 reactor (TMI-1) did not suffer any damage, but TMI-2’s partial meltdown marked the most serious nuclear accident in the history of U.S. commercial nuclear power.
While TMI-1 is currently dormant, an energy company wants to restart the nuclear reactor and turn it into an energy source to power data centers.
Reviving Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Station
Constellation Energy announced plans to bring Reactor 1 back into operation and run it for “decades.”
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This is in collaboration with Microsoft, which signed a 20-year agreement with the energy company to buy power from its operation to make its data centers more environmentally friendly. While undamaged, TMI-1 remained offline after the incident until 1989, before being shut down again in 2019. The recent shutdown was strictly because the plant was not economically viable to keep it up and running.
Constellation’s investment reportedly aims to restore TMI-1’s systems to operational readiness, which includes overhauls of the reactor’s cooling systems, turbines, and power transformers.
The energy company not only hopes to use the facility to power data centers, but they also want to power communities.
“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 Constellation’s CEO, Joe Dominguez.
Restarting old power plants to power data centers is not a new concept. For example, the former Homer City Generating Station in Western Pennsylvania was once one of the state’s largest coal power plants. Investors hope to soon turn it into an AI hub to power data centers.
Restarting the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor will take a little more effort and require local and federal approvals. Constellation Energy said that if all goes to plan, the reactor will restart operations in 2028 and continue to provide power until 2054.
