Order worth millions

Microsoft breathes new life into disrupted NPP for AI

The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant was decommissioned on September 20, 2019 - but not for good, as it now turns out.

(Bild: AP)

Microsoft's plans to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant for AI applications are taking shape. The utility company Constellation Energy has reportedly ordered a new main transformer worth around 100 million dollars.

This is the largest single item for the conversion, the news agency Reuters learned on Wednesday during a tour of the plant in the state of Pennsylvania. The plans envisage the complex on an island in the Susquehanna River generating 835 megawatts (MW) of electricity from 2028. Microsoft intends to use this to satisfy the energy hunger of its AI applications.

The nuclear power plant, which was shut down in 2019 for economic reasons, has been renamed the Crane Clean Energy Complex by Constellation. However, the nuclear power plant is still commonly known as Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear accident in the USA: in 1979, a partial core meltdown occurred in Unit 2.

Unit 1, on the other hand, is to be restarted. Microsoft and Constellation announced a corresponding contract worth 1.6 billion dollars last month.

Hand-wringing search for power sources
No modern reactor in the USA has ever been restarted after being shut down. However, US technology companies are now desperately searching for power sources in view of the enormous consumption of artificial intelligence.

In March, Amazon signed a contract with Talen Energy for a nuclear-powered data center. On Monday, Google signed the first commercial agreement to purchase 500 megawatts of electricity from several small modular reactors (SMRs) from the energy company Kairos Power. The first such small nuclear power plant is scheduled to go into operation in 2030.