Part 2 of 2 Parts
The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant is located near Pennsylvania’s capital, Harrisburg. The plant is most widely known for its Unit 2 reactor’s partial meltdown in 1979. It was one of the worst nuclear accidents in U.S. history. The reactor was immediately shut down in the aftermath of the accident.
John “Jack” Herbein was the Vice President of Metropolitan Edison at the time. He said, “Very small traces of radioactivity have been released from the plant.”
While there were no detectable health effects at the time, the Three Mile Island incident changed how nuclear plants operate. Unit 1 closed in 2019 because it was not economically viable. Constellation and Microsoft have plans to restart the reactor as early as 2027 at what is now called Crane Energy Center. It will produce more than eight hundred megawatts of energy. Nuclear power currently has the highest energy efficiency rate, yet energy producers say the U.S. should remain diversified.
Joseph Dominguez is the President and CEO of Constellation. He said, “I think it’s going to be an important part of the mix. We don’t need 24/7 power for the full amount of electricity in the U.S. We still have seasonal needs, we still have day and night differences.”
Microsoft is working to return the amount of power back to the grid that the company’s data centers will use from the regional transmission system.
Smith said, “Our philosophy as a company is that we will invest to bring onto the electric grid as much or more power than we will consume. We will do that in a way that ensures that none of the neighbors are going to see rise in their electricity rates.”
Constellation is also collaborating with Meta to relicense its Clinton Clean Energy Center in central Illinois for another 20 years.
Dominguez said, “It’s a combination of existing megawatts plus new megawatts that are being developed pursuant to the great agreements we have with the hyperscalers.”
Meta plans to add up to four gigawatts of nuclear power generation across the U.S. starting in the early 2030s. Amazon plans to build two data center complexes in Pennsylvania and use nearly two gigawatts of electricity from Talen Energy’s nuclear plant. Google is joining with Elementl Power on three nuclear projects, each expected to produce six hundred megawatts.
President Donald Trump said, “This is all nuclear. It’s a hot industry. It’s a brilliant industry,” as he signed several executive orders in May. Those orders are intended to quadruple domestic nuclear power production within the next twenty-five years.
David Sacks is the White House A.I. and Crypto Czar. He said, “To win the AI race, we’re going to need a lot of energy. The new AI data centers are very power hungry. They consume a lot of electricity. And the U.S. electric grid really hasn’t grown very much over the past decade.”
Sacks is the founder of the venture capital firm Craft Ventures. He is currently helping to steer President Trump’s A.I. agenda.
Sacks said, “We have to have the most infrastructure. We need to have the most data centers. We need the most computing power, and that means more energy. China has more than doubled the size of its electric grid over the past decade. We haven’t and so we need to drill baby drill and build baby build.”