Are Shuttered Nuclear Power Plants the Solution for Powering AI?

The site of one of the United States’ worst nuclear accidents is making history again.

Located just outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant that experienced a partial meltdown in 1979 is now set to reopen—to power Microsoft data centers.

After years of decreasing electricity demand, the plant was shut down in 2019. With the rise of artificial intelligence, however, a massive increase in demand could become inevitable.

“A ChatGPT search takes about 10 times the amount of energy as a Google search,” says Jeff Terry, professor of physics at Illinois Institute of Technology. “As the world becomes more AI-based, the power requirements go way up. So the question is: how do you meet that demand?

Microsoft decided the best way to meet the demand is to pay Constellation Energy to reopen Three Mile Island and buy all of the electricity it generates. Even down the reactor that experienced the partial meltdown and that will not be restarted, the savings are substantial.

Reopening a nuclear power plant has never been done before, but after Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Michigan began the process to restart in 2023, a shift toward utilizing more nuclear power in the U.S. may be beginning.

“This is the front of this trend. This has absolutely never happened before,” Terry says. “It’s going to be much cheaper than building a brand-new nuclear plant or giant wind farm or giant solar panel with batteries.

“For [the companies], it’s an incredible bargain.”