Department of Energy loaning $1 billion to help restart Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear reactor
The U.S. Department of Energy announced Tuesday that it would lend $1 billion to help finance the restart of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, which has a contract to supply power to technology giant Microsoft’s data centers.
The loan is consistent with President Trump’s administration priorities, including strengthening nuclear power and artificial intelligence.
For Constellation Energy, owner of Three Mile Island’s only working nuclear reactor, the federal loan will reduce its financing cost to bring the mothballed plant back online. The 835-megawatt reactor can power the equivalent of about 800,000 homes, the Energy Ministry said.
The reactor had been out of commission for five years when Constellation Energy announced last year that it would spend $1.6 billion to restart it as part of a 20-year deal with Microsoft to buy electricity for its data centers.
Constellation Energy renamed the business unit Crane Clean Energy Center as it works to restore equipment including the turbine, generator, main power transformer, and cooling and control systems. He hopes to bring the plant back into operation in 2027.
The loan is provided as part of an existing $250 billion energy infrastructure program initially authorized by Congress in 2022. Neither the department nor Constellation has released terms of the loan.
The plant, located on an island in the Susquehanna River just outside Harrisburg, was the site of the nation’s worst commercial nuclear accident, in 1979. The accident destroyed one reactor, Unit 2, and left the plant with one functioning reactor, Unit 1.
In 2019, Constellation Energy’s then-parent company Exelon shut down the operating reactor, saying it was losing money and Pennsylvania lawmakers had refused to subsidize it to keep it running.
The reactor restart project is part of a renaissance of sorts in nuclear power, as policymakers increasingly turn to it to shore up the nation’s electricity supply, help stave off the worst effects of climate change and meet the growing demand for energy driven by data centers.
