Energy

Three Mile Island to be restarted to power Microsoft data centers

Three Mile Island to be restarted to power Microsoft data centers
The Three Mile Island nuclear power station (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The Three Mile Island nuclear power station (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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The Three Mile Island nuclear power station (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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The Three Mile Island nuclear power station (CC BY-SA 4.0)

In a remarkable topical twofer, not only is Microsoft turning to nuclear power to run its data centers, it's commissioned the restarting of the infamous Three Mile Island station – the site of the worst commercial nuclear accident in US history.

This is one of those stories where it's hard to decide which angle to approach it from, so I flipped a coin and it came up Microsoft. One of the biggest trends in the tech field is how much big companies' data centers have been expanding as their internet services become more and more a part of our commercial and personal lives.

These power-hungry servers and databases were already becoming a drain on the electrical grid, but the explosion of AI has compounded the problem, with estimates data centers in the United States will suck as much as 35 GW of electricity by 2030, or almost twice the amount in 2022.

That might not seem like much, but that would equate to about 9% of the projected average power draw of the entire US in 2030. Since a lot of energy and environmental planning is based on estimated power consumption, a lot of sums will need to be redone. Worse, the current policy in many parts of the developed world relies heavily on conversion to renewable sources like wind and solar, which are intermittent, while these data centers must run 24/7 without interruption.

To maintain reliable base power for these centers, the biggest tech companies are looking to nuclear power to provide them with electricity at near-zero carbon emissions. US companies like Amazon are locating new centers next to nuclear power stations and Sweden is considering installing modular reactors so tech consumers can get uninterrupted AI images of horses with too many legs or people shoving a pound of fries into their mouths all at once.

On the other hand, Microsoft has struck a 20-year deal with Constellation to draw power from what was once the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station on the Susquehanna River in Londonderry Township, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and is now the Crane Clean Energy Center (CCEC).

On March 28, 1979, the reactor Three Mile Unit 2 suffered a core meltdown due to a strange combination of mechanical failure and human error that resulted in the reactor being severely damaged and radioactive water and iodine being released due to a failure of the pressurized water coolant system.

Though there were no casualties and long range studies were never able to confirm a causal rise in cancer cases in the area, Three Mile Island was the worst US commercial nuclear accident and arguably the third worst in the world after the later Chernobyl and Fukushima incidents. However, the impact of the disaster was swift. It brought the question of reactor safety to the fore and became the focus for environmentalists and anti-nuclear pressure groups. The result was the near-total paralysis of commercial nuclear power in the US and many European countries until very recently.

Contrary to popular belief, Three Mile Island wasn't completely shut down after the accident. The Unit 1 reactor continued operation until 2019 when it was decommissioned for economic reasons. Under the new Microsoft agreement, the restart will be the first ever for an American reactor after it has been shut down for good.

However, the restart of the 837-MW Unit 1 reactor won't be simply a matter of throwing a large and cinematic knife switch. According to Constellation, work will have to be done to refurbish the turbine, generator, main power transformer, and coolant and control systems. And then there's all the inevitable red tape with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission as well as state and local officials.

"This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative," said Bobby Hollis, VP of Energy, Microsoft. "Microsoft continues to collaborate with energy providers to develop carbon-free energy sources to help meet the grids' capacity and reliability needs."

Source: Constellation

11 comments
11 comments
Spud Murphy
Would be cheaper and simpler to install a massive solar array with storage, the amount of work required to get this thing safe for operation again is going to cost a bomb.
vekeller
"US companies like Amazon are locating new centers next to nuclear power stations and Sweden is considering installing modular reactors so tech consumers can get uninterrupted AI images of horses with too many legs or people shoving a pound of fries into their mouths all at once." Good article - but really? Come on.
Douglas Rogers
I HAVE solar. It's $.14/KWH w/o 30% rebate and $.10/KWH with. Gate price for Wolf Creek nuclear is $.038/KWH, helping Evergy's massive wind investment. This is why data centers want nuclear.
PaleDale
@Spud Murphy Solar??? Not a chance... The space required to get that many panels for equivalent power would be significant not to mention they cant provide 24/7 power. And no, adding a battery would not solve that issue, you would need even more panels for the excess power to change them to 100% each day. And then you have cloudy days... No, Solar is not an option for any commercial application beyond small businesses.
Spud Murphy
PaleDale, you are a typical renewables naysayer, yet countries and states around the world are making it work regardless. Here in Australia, SA is close to 100% renewables all the time using solar/wind/storage, and other states are getting there pretty quickly as well. It's generally accepted here that the whole country will be one 100% renewables in a few decades. Remember that the solar array doesn't have to be near the datacentre, it can be anywhere (although closer is better to reduce transmission losses), feeding the grid, and MS just needs a PPA with the solar farm owner.
TpPa
As long as they bring it up to date (without shortcuts) I say bring it, todays technology VS 1979, well one just can't compare. Unless we nuke ourselves with bombs 1st, we will need all the power we can get, not to mention Skynet's needs.
Wavmakr
Finally....intelligent life is returning.....!
Daishi
I'm sure Microsoft considered solar and is probably using it in some locations but Pennsylvania gets 3.5 peak sun hours per day on average. What do they do in the winter when there is minimal sunlight and you could have heavy cloud cover for weeks (or months) at a time? You would have to massively overbuild to store enough power to get though those times. Solar is very cheap as wholesale power during a sunny day and rely on grid power when needed but in corner cases like this the cost of overbuilding that significant it is probably very expensive.
Daishi
To follow up on my solar comment peak sun hours in winter can drop to 1 to 1.5 per day so you would need enough installed solar + storage to sustain uninterrupted power at 1 to 1.5 peak sun hours a day for months at a time. With those requirements it would have to be so overbuilt that it would be way more expensive than other options.
MA
This isn't surprising after TMI the NRC went into panic mode and many nonsensical ideas were put into place ballooning the price to bring a plant online.
People like to compare TMI to Chernobyl and now Fukagema. TMI was human error but failsafes in US design kept from a total meltdown.
Chernobyl isn't like any western design had many known flaws. Japan has license built apu1000 but didn't apply a fix in a problem that as found with natural circ. Along with some cultural issues where we are never wrong much like what happened at Chernobyl just with a much safer design.
Hopefully SMRs will be deployed next to data centers in the future. If you look at the NOVA Data center market Dominion is now saying it will take 7 years to connect power because they have to come up with the power generation. Fossil plants and solar can fill a gap but is no mach for the reliability stability and capacity of nuclear.
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