With a public meeting this Friday (25), regulators of nuclear activities in the United States began a long-awaited process to evaluate the unprecedented plans of the Constellation Energy to resume production at one of Three Mile Island’s two decommissioned plants.
Constellation, which announced last month that it had signed a 20-year energy agreement with Microsoftthus enabling the reopening of the Three Mile Island Unit 1 reactor, presented its project to resume the license over the plant to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The company also wants to extend the plant’s useful life and change its name to Crane Clean Energy Center.
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Worst US nuclear accident
Three Mile Island, located in Pennsylvania, on a river island in the Susquehanna River, is known for the partial meltdown of its Unit 2 reactor, which occurred in 1979. This unit has been permanently closed and is being dismantled.
Committee members asked for details on emergency evacuation plans for the plant to be reactivated, as well as information on the commercial agreement with Microsoft, also asking Constellation to move quickly to obtain updates related to water use at the plant.
The agency also asked questions about whether the reactivation of Unit 1 would interfere with the dismantling of Unit 2, which began last year, almost 45 years after the partial meltdown.
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Power plants from different companies
A EnergySolutionsbased in Utah, owns Unit 2 and its infrastructure, while Constellation owns Unit 1 and the island’s land. For economic reasons, Unit 1 stopped operating in 2019, about 15 years before its license expired.
Constellation now hopes to reactivate Unit 1, which has the capacity to produce 835 megawatts, providing power to the grid and thus offsetting the electricity use of the Microsoft data center in the region.
The growing demand for electricity in the US, driven in part by the expansion of Big Tech data centers due to artificial intelligence, has revived interest in the struggling North American nuclear industry.
This year, Constellation carried out initial tests on the reactor to check whether it was in a technical and financial condition to be reactivated.
“We understand how we deactivated it, and we have a good idea of how we will reactivate it,” plant manager Trevor Orth said in a meeting with the committee.
Activists have vowed to fight the project over environmental and safety concerns, including the storage of nuclear waste at the site.
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