nuclear-news

Three Mile Island nuclear plant gears up for Big Tech reboot

Reuters, By Laila Kearney, October 23, 2024

Summary

Companies

Activists say they will challenge licensing for the plant

Restart work is expected to begin in Q1 2025

Constellation has ordered major equipment

Microsoft would consider similar contracts to restart nuclear power plants

Work includes refurbishing cooling towers and millions of feet of scaffolding

THREE MILE ISLAND, Pennsylvania, Oct 22 (Reuters) – Giant cooling towers at Constellation Energy’s (CEG.O), opens new tab Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania have sat dormant for so long that grass has sprung up in the towers’ hollowed-out bases and wildlife roam inside.

Armed guard stations at an entrance to the shut concrete facility, surrounded by barbed wire, sit empty. The plant, which would run so loud when operating that workers were required to wear hearing protection, is nearly silent.

“It’s still eerie walking in here and it’s, just, quiet,” Constellation regulatory assurance manager Craig Smith said during a tour of the plant last week. Smith, who worked at Three Mile Island when Constellation shut the site’s remaining reactor in 2019, is now preparing for a restart.

Constellation announced last month that it would revive the half-century-old Three Mile Island with the purpose of fueling Microsoft’s (MSFT.O), opens new tab data centers. Microsoft is expected to pay at least $100 a megawatt-hour, nearly double the typical cost of renewable energy in the region, as part of the 20-year power contract.

The agreement shows the dramatic lengths Big Tech is willing to go to procure electricity for its artificial intelligence expansion and the undertaking by the U.S. power industry to meet that demand.

The effort to restore Unit 1 at Three Mile Island is expected to take four years, at least $1.6 billion, and thousands of workers to complete the unprecedented task of restarting a retired nuclear plant.

Constellation has already ordered costly equipment for the site and identified fuel for the unit’s reactor core, with work expected to start early next year, according to Reuters’ interviews with company executives, contractors and a tour of the site.

Successfully resurrecting Three Mile Island, which is widely known for a 1979 partial meltdown that cast a pall over the U.S. nuclear sector for decades, would put the plant at the front edge of an industry revival…………………………………………………..

A restart of the plant, however, is not certain. Three Mile Island, which will be renamed the Crane Clean Energy Complex, still requires licensing modifications and permitting. Local activists have also vowed to fight the project over safety and environmental concerns.

If the plan suffers the same lengthy delays and cost overruns that have plagued nearly every nuclear build in the country’s history, it could stymie other deals and set back Big Tech’s quest to rapidly expand, power experts say.

………………………………………………………………..The company has commissioned the fuel design for the reactor’s core, said Constellation Chief Generation Officer Bryan Hanson. The core holds the enriched uranium, the fuel source for the plant, stacked in pellets and sealed in tubes.

Constellation, which is the biggest U.S. operator of nuclear plants, will tap into fuel from its existing enriched uranium reserves as one of the final steps before starting up.

………………………………………………Not everyone is enthused about the prospect of a nuclear comeback. The power plants produce waste that can remain radioactive for thousands of years.

About a tennis court-size amount of spent nuclear fuel from Unit 1 is stored on Three Mile Island, which sits on a strip of land in the Susquehanna River. The decommissioning of Unit 2 is still underway about 45 years after the partial meltdown.

Local activist Eric Epstein, who remembers the March 1979 incident, said he will fight Constellation’s request to resume operating and water use licenses.

“It’s going to be a protracted battle,” Epstein said.

The first chance for the challenges comes on Oct. 25, when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has scheduled its initial public hearing on Constellation’s plan to restart Unit 1.
Reporting by Laila Kearney Editing by Marguerita Choy
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/three-mile-island-nuclear-plant-gears-up-big-tech-reboot-2024-10-22/

October 24, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology, USA