By Tom Warren , a senior editor and author of Notepad, who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years. Microsoft ju

Microsoft wants Three Mile Island to fuel its AI power needs

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2024-09-29 23:30:03

By Tom Warren , a senior editor and author of Notepad, who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years.

Microsoft just signed a deal to revive the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. If approved by regulators, the software maker would have exclusive rights to 100 percent of the output for its AI data center needs.

Constellation, the owner of the Three Mile Island plant, announced a power purchase agreement with Microsoft earlier today, which should see the site coming back online in 2028, assuming regulators approve it.

The reactor that Microsoft plans to source its energy from was retired in 2019 for economic reasons and is located next to a unit that was shut down in 1979 after the worst US nuclear accident in history. The plant that Constellation plans to reopen can generate 837 megawatts of energy, enough to power more than 800,000 homes — demonstrating the huge amount of power needed for data centers and Microsoft’s AI ambitions.

Microsoft has agreed to purchase power from the plant — which will be renamed to the Crane Clean Energy Center to honor the late Chris Crane, former CEO of Exelon — for 20 years in a first-of-its-kind deal for the software giant.