Constellation announced the signing of a 20-year power purchase agreement with Microsoft that will pave the way for the launch of the Crane Clean Energy Center (CCEC) and restart of Three Mile Island Unit 1, which operated at industry-leading levels of safety and reliability for decades before being shut down.
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Under the agreement, Microsoft will purchase energy from the renewed plant as part of its goal to help match the power its data centers in PJM use with carbon-free energy.
The Unit 1 reactor is located adjacent to TMI Unit 2, which shut down in 1979 and is in the process of being decommissioned by its owner, Energy Solutions. TMI Unit 1 is a fully independent facility, and its long-term operation was not impacted by the Unit 2 accident.
The Three Mile Island accident was a partial nuclear meltdown of the Unit 2 reactor (TMI-2). The reactor accident began at 4:00 a.m. on March 28, 1979, and released radioactive gases and radioactive iodine into the environment. It is the worst accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant history.
To prepare for the restart, significant investments will be made to restore the plant, including the turbine, generator, main power transformer and cooling and control systems.
Restarting a nuclear reactor requires U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval following a comprehensive safety and environmental review, as well as permits from relevant state and local agencies.
Additionally, through a separate request, Constellation will pursue license renewal that will extend plant operations to at least 2054. The CCEC is expected to be online in 2028.
A recent economic impact study commissioned by the Pennsylvania Building & Construction Trades Council found that the new CCEC will create 3,400 direct and indirect jobs and add more than 800 megawatts of carbon-free electricity to the grid.
The report, produced by The Brattle Group, also found that restarting the plant will add $16 billion to the state’s GDP and generate more than $3 billion in state and federal taxes.
To ensure that the local community fully participates in the economic benefits of restarting the facility, Constellation has committed an additional $1 million in philanthropic giving to the region over the next five years to support workforce development and other community needs.
Constellation purchased TMI Unit 1, in 1999. Before it was retired prematurely for economic reasons in 2019, the plant had a generating capacity of 837 megawatts, which is enough to power more than 800,000 average homes.
In its last year of operation, the plant was producing electricity at maximum capacity 96.3 percent of the time – well above the industry average.
The plant had an annual payroll of about $60 million and employed more than 600 full-time workers, in addition to the 1,000 highly skilled, mostly union craftspeople that supported the plant’s biennial refueling outages.
The plant will be renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center in honor of Chris Crane, who was CEO of Constellation’s former parent company and a true titan of the nuclear industry.
Crane passed away in April 2024. He helped build the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) and served on the boards of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) and the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO). ■