It might need appeared like one of many weirder headlines of 2024: Microsoft is paying $1.6 billion to restart Three Mile Island. That is the nuclear energy plant in Pennsylvania whose reactor #2 had a partial meltdown in 1979. There have been no accidents, and no person died, but it surely set the nuclear trade again years. Solely two new crops have been began since that accident.

“That is hallowed floor within the nuclear trade,” stated Joe Dominguez, the CEO of Constellation Vitality, which owns about half of America’s 54 nuclear crops (together with Three Mile Island). “It is a place the place we realized and acquired higher.”

He says that, on account of the 1979 accident, there have been 1000’s of adjustments in protocols and procedures concerning nuclear energy. “The factor that individuals overlook is that there was one other reactor on the web site,” he stated. “That web site, that reactor, continued to function till 2019, when it was closed for financial causes. Low cost pure fuel, low demand, subsidization of various applied sciences within the enterprise, [and] no coverage supporting nuclear induced crops to start out retiring.”

So, what’s Microsoft’s curiosity?

All of the Huge Tech corporations have formidable targets to combat the local weather disaster. That features Google and Microsoft, which have every pledged to achieve web zero carbon emissions. They had been making progress, too; every has invested billions in wind and photo voltaic vitality.

After which, then synthetic intelligence got here alongside. AI information facilities require big quantities of electrical energy.  Huge Tech realized that they would not make their emissions targets with out taking energy into their very own arms.

Dominguez stated, “Microsoft goes to get pleasure from the good thing about the dependable, clear vitality for 20 years.”

He says reopening the prevailing Three Mile Island facility could be faster and cheaper than developing a brand-new nuclear plant. “Not less than 10 instances cheaper than constructing a brand new plant,” he stated. “And we expect we may get it entering into about three years, versus the final plant that was constructed, [which] took nearly 10 years.”

However if you happen to’re a tech firm, what do you do if you do not have a recently-retired nuclear plant useful? You develop new ones. Solely weeks after Microsoft’s announcement, each Amazon and Google introduced main investments in nuclear energy.

Google is supplementing its already huge inexperienced vitality investments with a brand new type of nuclear, known as small modular reactors. “These usually are not the nuclear energy crops of yesterday, with the very massive cooling towers,” stated Michael Terrell, who heads Google’s decarbonization efforts. “These are a lot smaller services. However as a result of they’re modular, you may stack them collectively to amplify energy crops.

He anticipates the primary superior nuclear reactor shall be on-line by 2030. “And we’re not going to do only one reactor, however we hope to purchase from what shall be a sequence of reactors that comply with that,” Terrell stated.

Nuclear energy nonetheless is not good; it nonetheless produces waste that needs to be safely saved. However in contrast to photo voltaic and wind, nuclear energy is all the time on, which is crucial to these AI information facilities.

So, Google is funding an organization known as Kairos Energy to design and construct this new era of reactors. Kairos is constructing three small demonstration crops in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on the very spot the place uranium was processed for the primary atomic bomb.

CEO Mike Laufer says that his reactors do not use gasoline rods; they use gasoline pebbles, in regards to the measurement of golf balls – principally graphite, with tiny kernels of uranium. And every pebble has as a lot energy capability as 4 tons of coal.

And the way a lot carbon dioxide emissions, in comparison with coal? “Zero,” Laufer stated.

The Kairos reactors additionally run at decrease energy and decrease strain than conventional reactors, which suggests decrease danger.

Effectively, this all sounds nice! However what is the catch?  

“There’s just one downside with small modular reactors: They do not actually exist,” stated George Washington College professor Sharon Squassoni, who spent 15 years researching nuclear security for the federal government. She thinks Huge Tech corporations is likely to be in over their heads. “I believe they’ll discover out fairly rapidly that it takes manner too lengthy and it is manner too costly,” she stated. “I believe we will see simply how sturdy their commitments are to scrub vitality futures.”

“So, you are saying they could have to show to burning stuff [for power]?” I requested.

“I am fairly positive they may,” Squassoni replied.

“Do you assume there’s just a little little bit of tech-bro overconfidence therein?”

“Oh, fully, fully!” she laughed.

Kairos’ Mike Laufer admitted, “Sure, it is actually exhausting. I’ll completely agree with anybody. However we’re doing it at smaller scale to start out, after which constructing on that sooner or later.”

Joe Dominguez’s workforce is getting Three Mile Island prepared for Microsoft, together with renaming the plant the Crane Clear Vitality Middle. And if AI is igniting a renaissance in American nuclear, he says: full steam forward.

I requested, “Why do all new crops take a lot longer and price a lot greater than projected?”

“Sincere reply? We do not construct sufficient of them,” Dominguez stated. “You do not wish to construct a singular design; you wish to do type of a cookie-cutter, one-after-another design.”

“Is it properly understood in authorities and the trade that if you happen to begin doing the identical design time and again, we are able to get there quicker and cheaper?”

“It is in all probability the very best understood concept,” Dominguez stated. “It is understood by each Republicans and Democrats, which is a tough factor to say about something! Everyone understands that if you happen to construct a standard design, you construct a bunch of them.”

“So, you assume we’ll get there?”

“I do.”

Google’s Michael Terrell agrees, and believes his firm will make its zero-carbon purpose by 2030. “It’s an extremely formidable purpose: 24/7 carbon-free vitality in every single place we function each manner around the globe,” he stated. “Nevertheless it’s one thing we’re working very exhausting to attain, and we hope to get there.”

      
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Story produced by Mark Hudspeth. Editor: Remington Korper.

      
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