The Trump administration is issuing a $1 billion loan to reestablish a nuclear power plant at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island that’s been offline for five years.
The U.S. Department of Energy announced on Tuesday that it would help finance the Crane Clean Energy Project, supporting Constellation Energy in its effort to revive Three Mile Island Unit 1. Constellation is working with Microsoft to help offset the tech company’s mounting carbon emissions, which are largely due to data centers being used to power the artificial intelligence boom.
Bringing it back
The Three Mile Island Unit 1 reactor was shut down in 2019 after the state legislature failed to pass a bill that would continue to subsidize the plant. The plant’s closure took place 40 years after a cooling malfunction caused the Unit 2 reactor to partially melt down, releasing radiation into the environment. At the time, the incident negatively impacted public trust in nuclear energy, in addition to prompting rigorous safety measures and testing.
Before it went offline, the Unit 1 nuclear reactor had a generating capacity of 837 megawatts, enough to power 800,000 homes using carbon-free energy, according to Constellation. The Maryland-based company announced a deal with Microsoft last year to recommission the nuclear power plant, with the tech giant poised to purchase energy from the reactor to help offset the increasing demands of its data centers.
Microsoft has come under scrutiny for the expansion of its data centers due to the growing demand for large-scale AI models. The construction of new facilities has led to a 23.4% increase in Microsoft’s carbon emissions since 2020, according to the company’s environmental sustainability report. Microsoft’s data centers were responsible for between 280,782 metric tons and 6.1 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions in 2022, The Guardian reported in 2024.
The Department of Energy’s loan will partially finance the reopening of Constellation’s power plant as part of its deal with Microsoft, marking a renewed interest in nuclear energy at a time when AI data centers are driving up carbon emissions.
“Constellation’s restart of a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania will provide affordable, reliable, and secure energy to Americans across the Mid-Atlantic region,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in a statement. “It will also help ensure America has the energy it needs to grow its domestic manufacturing base and win the AI race.”
