That nuclear energy plant is often related to a really particular occasion. Considered one of its reactors, Unit 2, suffered a partial meltdown in 1979 in what stays essentially the most important nuclear accident in US historical past. It has been shuttered ever since.
However the website, in Pennsylvania, can be residence to a different reactor—Unit 1, which persistently and safely generated electrical energy for many years till it was shut down in 2019. The positioning’s proprietor introduced final week that it has plans to reopen the plant and signed a cope with Microsoft. The corporate will buy the plant’s total electrical producing capability over the following 20 years.
This information is fascinating for thus many causes. Clearly this website holds a sure significance within the historical past of nuclear energy within the US. There’s a chance this could be one of many first reactors within the nation to reopen after shutting down. And Microsoft might be shopping for all of the electrical energy from the reactor. Let’s dig into what this says about the way forward for the nuclear trade and Huge Tech’s energy demand.
Unit 2 at Three Mile Island operated for only a few months earlier than the accident, in March 1979. On the time, Unit 1 was down for refueling. That reactor began again up, to some controversy, within the mid-Eighties and produced sufficient electrical energy for lots of of 1000’s of properties within the space for greater than 30 years.
Finally, although, the plant confronted financial struggles. Regardless that it was working at comparatively excessive effectivity and with low prices, it was pushed out of enterprise by file low costs for pure gasoline and the introduction of comparatively low-cost, sponsored renewable vitality to the grid, says Patrick White, analysis director of the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, a nonprofit suppose tank.
That state of affairs has shifted in simply the previous few years, White says. There’s more cash obtainable now for nuclear, together with new technology-agnostic tax credit within the Inflation Discount Act. And there’s additionally rising concern in regards to the elevated vitality demand on the facility grid, partially from tech giants trying to energy information facilities like these wanted to run AI.
In asserting its cope with Microsoft, Constellation Power, the proprietor of Three Mile Island Unit 1, additionally shared that the plant is getting a rebrand—the positioning might be renamed the Crane Clear Power Middle. (Unsure if that one’s going to stay.)
The confluence of the actual location of this reactor and the truth that the electrical energy will go to energy information facilities (and different infrastructure) makes this entire announcement immediately attention-grabbing. As one headline put it, “Microsoft AI Wants So A lot Energy It is Tapping Web site of US Nuclear Meltdown.”