Microsoft to bring infamous nuclear plant back to life to feed POWER-HUNGRY AI data centers

09/25/2024 / By Belle Carter

Technology giant Microsoft is reportedly planning to tap the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear power plant – which is currently not operational – to supply its artificial intelligence data centers with power.

According to a report by Bloomberg, the Big Tech company made a deal with Constellation Energy, the largest U.S. operator of nuclear reactors, to bring back to life the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Londonderry Township, Pennsylvania.

The owner of the shuttered nuclear plant will reportedly invest $1.6 billion to revive just one of the two reactors at the site, which has been dormant since 2019. The other reactor at the plant was permanently closed nearly half a century ago following the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. Microsoft reportedly agreed to buy all the output from the plant, which is set to go back into service in 2028, as it seeks to secure a reliable source of carbon-free electricity for its data centers.

“Policymakers and the market have received a huge wake-up call,” Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez said in an interview. “There’s no version of the future of this country that doesn’t rely on these nuclear assets.”

Constellation will fund the project from its coffers rather than seek state or federal support. Dominguez said government approvals move slowly and he doesn’t want to wait. (Related: Big Tech eyes nuclear power to meet the demands of AI computing.)

Work at Three Mile Island is expected to start immediately, and efforts to restart the reactor have already been ongoing since early 2023, when Constellation began evaluating whether to switch the reactor back on. Early this year, the company had concluded that it wanted to pursue the project and Microsoft was immediately interested, Dominguez said.

Microsoft Vice President for Energy Bobby Hollis said in an interview that the deal will aid the company’s plans to run its massive global network of data centers on clean energy by 2025. This nuclear energy will fuel data center expansion in Chicago, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Three Mile Island suffered a partial meltdown on March 28, 1979, when a mechanical or electrical failure led to a partial meltdown at the Unit 2 reactor. Water pumps that helped cool the reactor core’s radioactive fuel malfunctioned. The staff didn’t realize the reactor was experiencing a loss of coolant and took a series of actions that made the problem worse, causing the reactor core to starve water flow and lead to overheating. The nuclear fuel began to melt through its metal container as radioactive gasses escaped into the surrounding community as a geyser of steam erupted from the top of the plant.

Data centers are bad for the environment

According to a report, Big Tech companies have been misleading the public with their claim that their data centers are helping save the environment from greenhouse gas emissions.

The Guardian reported that the actual emissions made by data centers owned by AI leaders including Microsoft, Google, Meta and Apple are about 662 percent higher than what they’ve been claiming. The analysis may have been not fully accurate as it has only measured emissions made between 2020 and 2022, a window that captures the cusp of the AI boom but not the staggering heights that it has reached now.

The analysis further indicated that Amazon was the largest emitter, but couldn’t be included in the above figure because data center-specific emissions weren’t available. All five of the tech companies have at various points claimed to be carbon neutral.

“It’s down to creative accounting,” said a representative from the advocacy group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice.

The tech companies’ reports on their emissions only show the “market-based” emissions, which are tamped down by purchasing energy certificates, or “Recs,” which they then factor into their calculations.

“These supposedly certify that a company is offsetting its dirty energy consumption with an equivalent amount of renewable energy. You’ll want to note that the renewable efforts don’t have to be undertaken by the company getting the certificates,” Futurism.com reported. “Some third party that they pay can handle doing the work of producing the renewables on their behalf.”

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Watch the video below that talks about Microsoft’s all-out drive to deploy AI and other features meant to “remove humans from the loop.”

This video is from the GoneDark channel on Brighteon.com.