At risk of understatement, let’s call it a big deal. Microsoft Corp.’s agreement with Constellation Energy Corp. to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania could prove highly consequential — for the green-energy transition and much else besides.
Constellation will invest $1.6 billion to restart one reactor at the plant — known globally as the site of an infamous meltdown more than four decades ago — while Microsoft will agree to buy 20 years’ worth of power for its data operations. “Policymakers and the market have received a huge wake-up call,” Constellation’s CEO told Bloomberg. “There’s no version of the future of this country that doesn’t rely on these nuclear assets.”
He’s right. Meeting global climate goals by 2030 will require some $1.2 trillion in added clean-energy investment each year, according to BloombergNEF. Although solar and wind have both made strides in recent years, thanks partly to expansive government subsidies, both have limitations, and neither can match nuclear for clean and reliable baseload energy. A nuclear splurge — especially in the US, where generation has stagnated for decades — is long overdue.
With big pockets, ambitious plans and public commitments to carbon-free energy, tech companies are ideally suited to that task. By one analysis, the share of US electricity consumed by data centers — crucial to powering artificial intelligence, among other applications — may double by 2030. Grid operators are already feeling the strain. It’s scarcely an exaggeration to say that bringing more nuclear power online could be essential to AI’s future.
To their credit, policymakers are starting to acknowledge these realities. In 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act provided (inter alia) production and investment tax credits, expanded loan guarantees, and R&D funding that should be of great benefit to the nuclear industry. Another bill enacted in July, known as the Advance Act, should make it easier to build next-generation reactors by removing licensing barriers, speeding application processing and otherwise slashing red tape. Predictions of a nuclear renaissance have come and gone before, but this time there’s real cause for optimism.
In that light, perhaps the most important element of the Microsoft deal is its symbolic resonance. Since a partial meltdown led to evacuations and mass panic in 1979, Three Mile Island has been a byword for nuclear calamity. It was the worst such incident in US history, and the alarm it caused helped speed the industry’s long domestic decline. And yet no one was harmed. As the Department of Energy notes, “no injuries, deaths or direct health effects were caused by the accident.” Those living closest to the site were exposed to less radiation than would normally result from an X-ray.
Microsoft’s bid is a welcome vote of confidence that nuclear is not only essential to fighting climate change and powering new technologies, but it’s also exceedingly safe. Indeed: It’s the future.
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