How the AI boom is reviving Three Mile Island
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It was the first step in a nuclear nightmare. The breakdown in an atomic power plant in Pennsylvania today is probably the worst nuclear reactor accident to date. So back in 1979, there was an accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor. It happened at the number two generator about four o'clock this morning. Something caused the secondary cooling system to fail. What happened was that reactor number two

had a partial meltdown and there was a radiation leak into the atmosphere. Certain people have been advised to evacuate, others have been urged to remain indoors. Telephone lines in the Harrisburg area are jammed and immediate highways are too as more people decide to leave. It caused 140,000 people to evacuate their homes, although it didn't directly kill anyone.

It caused a huge panic and it changed the mentality about nuclear power in the U.S. The Three Mile Island site in Pennsylvania quickly turns into a black mark on the industry. Shortly after the disaster, reactor number two, the one that experienced the partial meltdown, is permanently shut down. And nuclear power's image only gets worse. Because of the Three Mile Island accident,

then Chernobyl, then Fukushima. There was greater distrust of nuclear, greater concern and skepticism. But more recently, that image is shifting again. And that's thanks to Silicon Valley. Big tech companies are hungry for energy and they're looking to all options, including revitalization of these old sites like Three Mile Island. But there really are a lot of challenges in the way that may block their ambitions.

And the stakes in the opinions of these companies couldn't be higher. The really key thing about this is if the tech giants can't get the power, then they and America will not be leading the AI revolution that's expected to sweep the world over the next two to three decades. So this is a really strategic and important issue for these companies, but also for the U.S. I'm Michaela Tendera from the Financial Times.

There's a litmus test for nuclear power's rally, and it's underway at the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, Three Mile Island. Today on Behind the Money, we're looking into what it'll take to get the site back online and what that'll mean for the future of nuclear power in the U.S. After years of stagnation, demand for electricity in the U.S. is booming. BFT's U.S. energy editor, Jamie Smith, said,

tells me that a big reason for that is artificial intelligence. Companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft...

They are part of this revolution in artificial technology. They're building out data centers all across the U.S. and worldwide. And these data centers are really energy hungry. They eat up a lot of power. It takes 10 times as much power for an AI chatbot request compared to a normal Google search.

But these companies aren't looking for just any type of power to fuel their AI ambitions. These big tech giants want clean power. They do not want power that comes from fossil fuels because they themselves have very strict climate targets and they're determined to meet them. And the great thing about nuclear power is it's a 24-7 reliable power source that's always on.

Once you turn on a plant, it keeps going. And to keep these data centers running, 24-7 power is an absolute must. Power demand in the U.S. is growing again, and it's growing rapidly after two decades of flatlining. So that means that nuclear power, once considered uneconomic and expensive to build and a little bit risky, it's now back in vogue. This is happening all over the country. You know, you're seeing sites...

being evaluated for restoration, like Three Mile Island. There's several of them. We're also seeing sites pinpointed for what you call small modular reactors, which are a new type of technology, smaller, more efficient reactors that are easier to build.

The utilities companies that operate nuclear power have also been experiencing a boost. We're also seeing this really supercharging of the share prices of many of the utilities in the United States. Some companies' share prices have doubled in value this year. It's really been an incredible change. So that's where Three Mile Island, a utility company called Constellation Energy, and Microsoft all came together a few months ago.

So on September 20th, there was a decision that really shocked the US. It was a bit of a surprise. Folks, it's a beautiful day here in Pennsylvania. I hope it is where you are. Constellation held an investor call where they laid out that they were going to reopen Three Mile Island after it had been closed five years earlier.

And the reason that they were going to do it was because they'd signed this big power purchase agreement with Microsoft. This is a very special day for Constellation for America. As we announce our plans to restart our plant located at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, and bring to life 835 megawatts of what is the most important energy commodity in the world today, clean and reliable electricity.

So let me clarify something here. There were actually two reactors at the Three Mile Island site. There's the reactor that suffered the partial meltdown in 1979. That one is going to stay closed. But there's a second one that was shut down about five years ago. That's the one that Constellation is looking to reopen. This announcement really surprised many people in the U.S.,

I think it was an iconic moment for the nuclear revival because Three Mile Island accident was such a defining moment for the nuclear industry here. It really turned people against the technology. And now the decision to reopen the reactor, it's really a clear signal that the nuclear renaissance is taking shape. Constellations made a deal with Microsoft to reopen this reactor by 2028.

So they have a few years, but the clock is ticking to meet that deadline. And in that time, there are a lot of hurdles that Constellation will have to overcome. First of all, there is the issue of financing. They have to make sure they've got enough money to get this off the ground. Then there's the issue of staffing. There's also the need to refurbish and check all the equipment. There's also the crucial issue of regulatory challenges that they're going to face as they try to reopen the plant.

And then, of course, you've got the issue of community support. They need a license to operate, and that means getting the community on side. But if Constellation can do this, as Jamie said, it could become an important symbol of the revival of nuclear energy in the U.S. The first hurdle to overcome when it comes to getting any nuclear power project off the ground is financing.

The nuclear industry has become known for these boom and bust cycles following disasters such as Fukushima and Three Mile Island. So it scared investors away from wanting to bet on this sector and forced the industry to rely on government support. The Biden administration has allocated several billion dollars to keep existing nuclear plants open and restart a handful of mothballed reactors.

I think Constellation is likely to apply for a big loan from the government to help fund the cost of restarting Three Mile Island. And that cost is estimated at about $1.6 billion. But here's the thing. Even when a reactor gets up and running again, it can be really expensive to keep operations going. It's an issue that in the past has been a serious problem for the industry.

In fact, the reactor that's being restarted by Constellation and Microsoft was shut down only five years ago because the cost of electricity was so high at the time.

We'd gone through the shale gas boom in the US and that really reduced the cost of gas power generation. Nuclear just couldn't compete. Now, the growth of artificial intelligence data centres is really changing the funding model. Big tech needs safe, reliable power and it's turning to nuclear and it's willing to pay up to double the cost of other types of electricity to get it going.

So what's different in the equation this time is Microsoft's deep pockets. Analysts estimate that Microsoft is willing to pay somewhere between $110 and $115 per megawatt hour for power, which is roughly double what a typical power purchase agreement is. A power purchase agreement is a contract to buy a certain amount of power over a certain duration of time. And it gives a...

and a utility, the confidence to go ahead and invest in a power source. So Jamie, this reactor, it closed down five years ago. So why is Microsoft so willing to boot it back up? Why do it at Three Mile Island? Well, there's only a handful of reactors that can possibly be restarted in the US, which aren't already up and running.

Three Mile Islands reactor was one of those, and it's significantly cheaper to restart a mothballed reactor compared to building a new one from scratch. For example, Plant Vogel in Georgia, the cost came in double what was originally intended. The $1.6 billion restart figure is going to be put toward a lot of stuff, which Jamie got to see firsthand earlier this October, along with some other journalists.

We all got on the bus, we got driven into the plant through the barbed wire security fences and then we got to the main reactor site which they're planning to reopen. So we all got off the bus where there's guys with machine guns, you know, it was very heavy security presence, go through metal detectors and then we got shown around the plant.

For the record, that's what Constellation's named Three Mile Island's reactor site, the Crean Clean Energy Center.

all very eco-friendly sounding. We'll get our hard hats and safety glasses. We'll take a tour. We'll go up to the main turbine deck. During this tour, Jamie says he really got a better sense for just how big this task is going to be to get the plant back up and running.

Constellation needs to rigorously check all the equipment, all the piping, all the wiring. I mean, it's a huge plant. There's somewhere around 16,000 different pipes in this facility. All of them will have to be checked to make sure they're still in working order. Flush the pipes.

We took some actuators off these particular valves in front of us. We've got to refurbish those, put new soft parts, O-rings, things like that in, reinstall them, cycle the valves, and make sure they work. That's just maintenance activity. Another factor here when it comes to refurbishing a plant like this will be sourcing the right equipment. The minute nuclear power supply chains are quite stretched because there is this increased interest and revival in nuclear power companies,

Constellation also say that in terms of refurbishing the plant, that they're on target. The one piece of big equipment that they need, this big power generation transformer, they've already ordered. It's $100 million worth of kit and there is actually supply chains in nuclear power and the energy sector are stretched at the minute. So you've got to order these things at

at least three years in advance. So they've ordered theirs. They say they can make this 2028 target. Let's see. But there's another challenge that Constellation will face to get everything restarted. The staffing.

You know, it's really difficult to train people to operate local plants at short notice. And three years isn't really a very long time. You've got to find the staff, you've got to train them. It's an 18-month training period to train an operator for a nuclear power plant. So they really have to get cracking on this.

And, you know, since the closures of many of these nuclear power plants in the last two decades, you know, you've seen a lot of people leave the industry. So it's a very old workforce now in these plants, and it's going to be difficult to find the new workers and train them up to get them ready. While Constellation's tackling those issues, another hurdle will be securing regulators' approval.

And when it comes to nuclear power, that's not so easy. Nuclear energy is one of the most highly regulated industries in the world. So to get Three Mile Island up and running again, there's going to be dozens of regulatory hoops that they're going to have to jump over and jump through. For example, they're going to have to satisfy inspectors at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the plant is safe to receive a new operating license to restart the facility.

The NRC is considered one of the toughest regulators in the U.S. You know, their primary focus is safety and not surprisingly so. So they don't like to be rushed. On Constellation's side for all this is Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. Shapiro was helping Constellation skip a lengthy queue to connect Three Mile Island to the electricity grid. In September, he asked regulators to fast track its plans.

However, not everyone's looking to fast-track this plan in the name of artificial intelligence supremacy. We'll hear more about that after the break. Beyond all the financial and regulatory obstacles for Three Mile Island, there's another big challenge for getting the plant back open and restarted. The people who lived through the original Three Mile Island disaster back in 1979. People like Patricia Longnecker. My husband and I

had gone to Lancaster area down in the county and we were going to help our friends prune vines at a vineyard. And on the way there, we stopped at a truck stop and on a CB radio came an announcement, accident at Three Ma Island. This was a new set of words to us. So I went to meet

Patricia Longnecker, who is a farmer who lives about three miles away from the reactor. She told me her story and the story about her family. She was in the area at the time of the accident and her family were in the area at the time of the accident and had to evacuate. You had never thought this could be possible because this was touted as our future energy source.

And those big towers represented the whole technology of our future and the miracle that was going to be our source of electricity. We aren't going to need anything else, right? Little did we understand what peril could have unfolded that very day.

Paddy really feels that the disaster was mishandled by the authorities at the time. There was a complete communications breakdown from the local government, from the local plant operators,

So after the accident, Paddy started a group, which still exists to this day, 45 years later. It's called Three Mile Island Alert. They live in the local community and they're obviously really gutted by this decision to bring back Three Mile Island. You know, they feel that they've fought for four decades against this plant. And then this decision was taken, you know, without any community consultation beforehand to reopen the plant.

When the nuclear powers want to reopen this plant where we came very close to a full meltdown,

and revive it and ask out of taxpayer money to get the thing operating again in the midst of what was a near disaster for a whole region and a region where the soil was just our best gift, our crops, our farms, our whole way of life. To take that

and put it on this precipice. It's deceitful. It's unethical. It should never be happening to us again. One of the issues that the opponents of the restart of Three Mile Island talk about is that

The reactor which suffered a partial meltdown is still being cleaned up. In fact, the timelines for cleaning up that reactor have blown out over recent years. It's quite a difficult operation to do that. You know, this material will stay radioactive for hundreds of years.

But one of the issues that the protesters have is that they say they're restarting at a time when the reactor, which suffered a partial meltdown, is still being cleaned up and hasn't been decommissioned yet. They say that shows the wrong emphasis that regulators and plant operators have. They're pursuing profit rather than ensuring the clean up operation and safety.

So our group is still trying to be effective. And it's just the height of injustice that this would be promoted. And our governor allowing all this process. So we are hoping for a miracle, but I have no great hopes. Patricia said she doesn't have much faith in stopping the plant from reopening. But her group does have a plan.

They want to make the regulatory process as difficult as possible for Constellation. So Constellation is going to have to apply for certain licenses to covering various different things from use of water to other types of regulatory licenses and actions. So the plan...

from the activists is to try and challenge these different licenses and to use every legal means at their disposal to try and slow down this plant and try and block it from opening. Still, some members of the community are excited about this reopening.

I mean, when I visited there, there were a lot of people who were in favor of the reopening of Three Mile Island because they saw the jobs and the investment that it would create. Constellation are saying they're going to employ more than 600 people on the site. And they're saying that the tax benefits are going to be billions of dollars. The regulatory landscape that Constellation is set to face might also be in the process of undergoing changes as the Trump administration prepares to take charge.

While nuclear has been, in general, an area with bipartisan support. I think there is a concern that the Trump administration may go too far in trying to speed up the regulatory process in nuclear. You know, one of the big issues has been that there's been, you know, it's really hard to get stuff done in the nuclear world because getting licenses takes a lot of time.

The industry does want improvements there. It really wants more efficiency. It wants faster timelines. What it probably doesn't want is, you know, a real shortcut or a complete culling of the regulatory agencies that could cause problems

problems, you know, in terms of safety issues, because, you know, as I think we've seen, if there are accidents, if there is a drop in public trust in nuclear, that could kill the entire industry. Jamie, now, Constellation said that they have every intention of meeting this 2028 deadline with Microsoft.

But what happens if they don't? For Constellation, you know, not meeting the 2020 deadline could be tricky because it's likely that in that Microsoft contract, you know, there are penalties if it doesn't get the electricity it needs to, you know, to power its data centers by that exact date. We don't actually have the contract, so we don't know. I actually asked...

constellation about this, the 2028 date in terms of penalties. They've refused to confirm or deny whether that was the case. So it's a little bit shrouded in secrecy. So, I mean, the companies that say that they need this power, the Microsofts and the Amazons, if not nuclear, then what else could they do? Do they have other options? At the minute,

There are few good alternatives for the big tech companies to nuclear. You know, they can try and build more renewables,

But we have the challenge then that they, you know, the sun doesn't always shine, the wind isn't always blowing, it's a variable type of energy source. It doesn't provide the always on, stable, reliable form that nuclear does. And on the other side, they could, of course, just build gas plants everywhere to fuel these data centers. But then they would have to concede that they wouldn't be able to meet their climate targets.

And those are important to the companies and their investors. Behind the Money is hosted by me, Michaela Tendera. Safia Ahmed is our producer. Sound design and mixing by Katie McMurrin, Joseph Salcedo, and Breen Turner. Original music is by Hannes Brown. Topher Forges is our executive producer. Cheryl Brumley is the global head of audio. Thanks for listening. See you next week.

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