WASHINGTON: Three Mile Island, the site of America’s worst nuclear accident in 1979, will restart operations to provide power to Microsoft, Constellation Energy announced on Friday.

Microsoft will use the capability to deliver its expanding AI and cloud services, which are putting pressure on local electricity providers as tech giants build more power-hungry data centres.

The 20-year agreement involves restarting Unit 1, which “operated at industry-leading levels of safety and reliability for decades before being shut down for economic reasons exactly five years ago”, Constellation said in a statement. Unit 1 was not involved in the 1979 partial nuclear meltdown at the Pennsylvania site. Before its premature retirement in 2019, the plant could power over 800,000 average homes.

Microsoft will use this energy to support power grids in the mid-Atlantic states around Washington DC, a region considered an internet crossroads.

Bobby Hollis, Microsoft’s vice president of energy, said that Three Mile Island’s nuclear energy will bolster a power grid covering 13 states.

This area faces severe strain from data centres’ massive energy consumption, raising concerns about grid stability as AI demands increase.

Tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are rapidly expanding their data centre capabilities to meet the AI revolution’s computing needs while also scouring the globe for sources of electricity.

Hollis said the project was part of a “multi-technology approach” to sourcing power, which includes wind and solar energy, and “an essential pathway to achieving our goal of becoming carbon negative by 2030”.

Published in Dawn, September 21st, 2024