US energy group Constellation announced on Friday that it was restarting a nuclear unit at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, the site of the worst nuclear accident in US history, to supply electricity to Microsoft data centres.
According to a press release, the agreement signed with the American IT giant covers 20 years and will allow the restart of unit 1, next to the one that was the scene of the 1979 accident.
AFP
Constellation acquired Unit 1 of the plant in 1999. Before its premature decommissioning for economic reasons in 2019, it had a production capacity of 837 megawatts, enough to power more than 800,000 homes, the press release recalls.
“Powering industries critical to our nation’s global economic and technological competitiveness, including data centers, requires an abundance of reliable, carbon-free energy every hour of every day, and nuclear power plants are the only energy sources that can consistently deliver on that promise,” Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez said in the statement.
Constellation specifies that significant investments will be made to restore the plant, in particular the turbine, the generator and the cooling systems.
AFP
Restarting a nuclear reactor requires prior approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission after a comprehensive safety and environmental review, the energy company notes.
The site, which is expected to create 3,400 direct and indirect jobs, should be operational again in 2028.
“This agreement represents a major step in Microsoft’s efforts to help decarbonize the grid,” said Bobby Hollis, the American giant’s head of energy, quoted in the press release.
The development of artificial intelligence requires enormous computing capacities, provided by legions of computer servers, housed in data centers.
The power consumption of these servers is colossal and threatens to saturate the American electrical grid if its capacities are not extended by the addition of new resources.
On Wednesday, Microsoft announced it was partnering with asset manager BlackRock and funds to invest $100 billion in infrastructure dedicated to the development of artificial intelligence.
The funds will go towards creating or expanding data centers as well as building electricity generation infrastructure to power energy-intensive AI facilities.
