A unit of Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant will be restarted as part of a new energy-sharing agreement with Microsoft, which plans to us

Three Mile Island nuclear plant to help power Microsoft's data-center needs

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2024-09-20 15:00:08

A unit of Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant will be restarted as part of a new energy-sharing agreement with Microsoft, which plans to use it to power the data centers it operates as part of its push into artificial intelligence.

In a joint release, Microsoft and Constellation Energy, Pennsylvania's main utility, said Three Mile Island Unit 1, a unit separate from the one that sparked the infamous shutdown nearly five decades ago, will be used to provide clean energy to the tech giant as the artificial intelligence arms race heats up.

Constellation shut down Unit 1 in 2019 due to operating losses. Unit 2 was shut down in the wake of the 1979 incident that saw a partial core meltdown that led radioactive compounds to be released into the environment.

Studies have produced a range of estimates for the death toll over the course of 30 years as a result of the radiation release — but it is often cited as having set back America's nuclear-energy push for a generation.