Inside Three Mile Island’s nuclear restart with Microsoft, now targeting 2027 launch, one year ahead of plan

The operators of the last operating nuclear power reactor at Three Mile Island say they will re-open it, now a year ahead of schedule, in 2027, instead of 2028, because grid operator PJM Interconnection says they can speed up the process of reconnecting the plant to the power grid. During a media tour, Constellation Energy said that not only would the plant be generating power for artificial intelligence products, but that, with the help of Microsoft, AI would be implemented into the daily process of generating nuclear power. Meanwhile, in the main control room, most of the controls are still analog. The room is populated with switches, buttons, rotary phones and file cabinets that look like relics from the 20th century, as the control center was kept separate from digital processes and the internet until it was shut down in 2019. “When we restart this plant, we’re gonna have some of the cutting-edge AI technologies embedded in the plant,” said Joe Dominguez, Constellation Energy's president and CEO. “To help our operators see things before they occur, make sure that we’re on time, ahead of time on maintenance when we have to be.” The money-losing reactor's owner shut it down in 2019, unable to compete with a flood of cheap natural gas in energy markets. But with the boom in demand for artificial intelligence and cloud computing products, Microsoft struck a 20-year deal with Constellation Energy to reopen it under an exclusive deal that all the energy goes to Microsoft's data centers. The plan to restart Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 comes amid something of a renaissance for nuclear power, as policymakers are increasingly looking to it to bail out a fraying electric power grid, help avoid the worst effects of climate change and meet rising power demand driven by data centers. This article was provided by The Associated Press.