News Microsoft inks deal to restart Three Mile Island nuclear reactor to fuel its voracious AI ambitions

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Forty-five years since the Three Mile Island accident. While I've historically been a fan of nuclear power, is Microsoft going to be in this for the long haul? The maintenance and regulatory burden is just second to none, and that's before you get into public opposition like Vermont Yankee fought for decades. Nuclear power isn't like the abandoned-in-place fiber optic over-expansion from the dot com boom. Vermont Yankee shut down in 2014 and is finally nearing full decommissioning in the next two years.

This just sounds like the sort of wild idea that pops out there at the end of a bubble before everything finally comes back down to earth. What's the backup plan for Three mile when Microsoft eventually backs out two to five years from now?
 
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I have been wondering for a while when people are going to recognize that the big AI rollout and its energy consumption is going to raise our utility bills, just like EV charging already is.

On another note: Microsoft will learn about the NRC and their lack of help for power plants. They regulate, but almost never help with problems.
 
So MS is going to put the shackles on Constellation by making it private-only? I take this as MS really expects this datacenter to eat 900-1000 MW rather consistently.

On the other hand, I take it that Constellation's backup plan if MS bails out is to put it up as a publicly-accessible utility. Even with EV growth slowing down, we need new power to come online as coal plants are being shut down (not all are being converted to nat gas).
 
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I remember a time when everyone was concerned about the power usage for mining crypto currencies.
Now we are adding this on top of that.

I wonder what they will come up next? In the end it all centers around CPU/GPU, so the next big thing has to be another CPU/GPU "invention".
 
Are we sure TMI Unit 1 is still considered clean energy? I had thought part of the reason it shut down was due to its old design and the amount of radioactive waste it produced. I'm not sure whether to congratulate Microsoft or scorn them.
 
I have a question about this that I don't know have been fully hammered out yet in these initial stages.

By restart do they mean turning back on an antique reactor from 50 years ago

or

By "restart" are they using the word in a somewhat loaded way meaning that there will be a new more efficient and also reliable reactor core that's only a few years old? The kind of reactor that wouldn't do what happened all those years ago on the island?

I probably missed it, but has anybody seen the meaning behind the word "restart" in this regard?
 
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ezst036 said:
I have a question about this that I don't know have been fully hammered out yet in these initial stages.

By restart do they mean turning back on an antique reactor from 50 years ago

or

By "restart" are they using the word in a somewhat loaded way meaning that there will be a new more efficient and also reliable reactor core that's only a few years old? The kind of reactor that wouldn't do what happened all those years ago on the island?

I probably missed it, but has anybody seen the meaning behind the word "restart" in this regard?
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Read the article, not just the headline. The answers to your questions lie within...
 
ezst036 said:
I probably missed it, but has anybody seen the meaning behind the word "restart" in this regard?
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Most of the money, I would guess, would go to bringing the infrastructure (mechanical, electrical, etc) up to spec (a more modern one). Probably a new control room and consoles as well. But it won't have the safety features of a current gen plant - that would cost much, much more. Then, new nuclear fuel will be loaded in the reactor and that reaction will be restarted. A bit weird to me that the plants were disconnected from the grid.
 
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Flemkopf said:
What's the backup plan for Three mile when Microsoft eventually backs out two to five years from now?
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What happens to the spent fuel after MS eventually backs out? Any plan better have a commitment here.

Leaving it behind in pools and casks for the taxpayer and a future generation to figure out, is the wrong answer.
 
Huh, right after Bill Gates broke ground at the site of his new molten-sodium-metal "Natrium" reactor in Wyoming, Microsoft decided to reopen an old pressurized-water reactor from 1974 which is licensed to operate until 2034 but was shut down early due to unprofitability.
 
The stench of hypocrisy for climate change is cryto and AI. The same groups that are worried about climate change are fueling it. My cost for electric keeps going up and up, in part because of AI and crypto.
 
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It will be interesting to see how the government here in Germany deals with the growing AI energy requirements. All of Germany's nuclear power plants have been shut down. In my opinion, that was a huge mistake.
 
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ezst036 said:
By restart do they mean turning back on an antique reactor from 50 years ago
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Looks like they're replacing the turbines, cooling pumps, and grid connections. The actual reaction chamber will not be changed. That's why I question if TMI's ancient design is still considered "clean" or not. TMI 1 is a very old reactor that lacks the advancements of newer designs.
 
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It'll be at least 8-10 years to get a decommissioned nuke plant recommissioned, assuming work begins immediately. And, depending upon how hard they run the reactor they're looking at refueling as often as every 2-3 years with a downtime of at least that every cycle. This will cost them billions.
 
bigdragon said:
Are we sure TMI Unit 1 is still considered clean energy? I had thought part of the reason it shut down was due to its old design and the amount of radioactive waste it produced. I'm not sure whether to congratulate Microsoft or scorn them.
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That's why it's costing over a billion USD to bring it back online. They have to bring the reactors and all safety to modern day requirements. For the price that's being projected for this project, they could easily make this as efficient and produce enough electricity as anything being built with today's atomic/nuclear regulations and standards.
 
Sippincider said:
What happens to the spent fuel after MS eventually backs out? Any plan better have a commitment here.

Leaving it behind in pools and casks for the taxpayer and a future generation to figure out, is the wrong answer.
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From what I've learned, the company who is in charge of operations also takes on the burden of the spent fuel. It's all in the price of the reactor/facility being built and run. Not sure it that means MS or Constellation. I think they'd probably split the cost of long term storage. I of course don't know for sure about that last part.

But part of getting a license to operate a fission reactor is the commitment of said long term storage.

Edit: I learned that from a YT video Kyle Hill made. It answers your questions about this topic. I forget which one. But it is about a reactor being shut down I believe. It's been a couple/several months since it was posted.

Kyle Hill has a ton of good videos explaining the ins and outs of fission plants and operations and deactivations.
 
sjkpublic said:
The stench of hypocrisy for climate change is cryto and AI. The same groups that are worried about climate change are fueling it. My cost for electric keeps going up and up, in part because of AI and crypto.
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No, the price of energy keeps going up and up because more people need more power at the same time on grids that have barely been invested on.
A data Center is going to get a couple of thick new power connections straight to the producer,
where you are expected to power your heat pumps cars and computers with solar and batteries on which you never breakeven with a backup to a grid that was constructed in the fifties and sixties for which they guesstimated you would use a couple of light bulbs a fridge and a single tv.
 
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sjkpublic said:
The stench of hypocrisy for climate change is cryto and AI. The same groups that are worried about climate change are fueling it. My cost for electric keeps going up and up, in part because of AI and crypto.
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Big datacenters are going to be built if not by Microsoft, then by a competitor. If MS is doing this, it's because they expect a profit from it, so blame their customers if you need to blame someone.

I'd say they are making a climate friendly choice. You can perhaps argue about "environmentally" friendly, but there's no doubt nuclear is climate friendly vs. E.g. coal.

What's the option? Solar? Back of the napkin math says you'd need almost 5000 acres of solar to produce this much power plus a whole hell of a lot of batteries. Do you think paving that much farm land is a great choice?
 
Of course, because why not? What could possibly go wrong?

/wait until Cloudstrike is installed on the computers...
 
Guardians Bane said:
That's why it's costing over a billion USD to bring it back online. They have to bring the reactors and all safety to modern day requirements. For the price that's being projected for this project, they could easily make this as efficient and produce enough electricity as anything being built with today's atomic/nuclear regulations and standards.
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They don't seem to be making any upgrades to the reactor itself, but rather the mechanical components like turbines, etc. A modern GW-scale nuclear power plant costs tens of billions of dollars, far more than the 1.6 billion projected for this project.
 
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