$1B DOE Loan Aids Restart of Retired Three Mile Island Nuclear Unit to Power AI Growth
The plan to restart the retired Three Mile Island Unit 1 in Pennsylvania gained a major financial boost this week with the U.S. Department of Energy securing a $1 billion loan to nuclear plant owner Constellation Energy Generation.
The $1 billion guarantee will aid Constellation in restarting what is now called the Crane Clean Energy Center, renamed in honor of the late Christopher Crane, former CEO of Exelon Corp.
Three Mile Island Unit 1—not the unit 2 which suffered an infamous partial meltdown in the late 1970s—was retired several years ago but could be commercially operational later this decade to help meet increased demand from data center hyperscalers.
Microsoft last year signed its biggest-ever power purchase agreement with Constellation, a 20-year deal estimated at close to $27 billion, to sustain the Crane project financially.
“DOE’s quick action and leadership is another huge step towards bringing hundreds of megawatts of reliable nuclear power onto the grid at this critical moment," said Joe Dominguez, president and CEO of Constellation. "It’s a great example of how ‘America first’ energy policies create jobs, growth and opportunities and make the grid more reliable. Utilities and grid operators are moving too slowly and need to make regulatory changes that will allow our nation to unlock its abundant energy potential.”
The rush to meet rising demand from artificial intelligence factories and cloud-based data computing could result in a “nuclear renaissance” which several years ago seemed improbable due to economic challenges for reactor plants. Nuclear energy offers baseload power at high capacity factors and without carbon emissions.
The DOE load was funded by the Energy Dominance Financing (EDF) Program created under the Working Families Tax Cut, highlights the Energy Department’s role in advancing President Trump’s Executive Order, Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base, by supporting the restart of nuclear power plants.
“Constellation’s restart of a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania will provide affordable, reliable, and secure energy to Americans across the Mid-Atlantic region,” Energy Secretary 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.”
This announcement marks the first project to receive a concurrent conditional commitment and financial close under the Trump Administration. The loan will partially finance the restart of a reactor which ceased operations in 2019 but was never fully decommissioned.
Once restarted, pending U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing approvals, the 835 MW reactor will provide power into the PJM Interconnection region, powering the equivalent of approximately 800,000 homes.