A shuttered nuclear plant rumbles back to life to power artificial intelligence at the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. What could possibly go wrong? The question just became concrete, after Microsoft announced last week that it had signed a deal that will reactivate a unit of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Three Mile Island became shorthand for the worst case scenario of nuclear energy, after a partial meltdown in 1979 exposed about 2 million people to radiation and made nuclear anathema in American politics and energy. Now, though, nuclear energy is making a comeback, and tech is playing a key role. Gallup found support for nuclear energy the highest it’s been in a decade. Silicon Valley in particular has touted nuclear as a reliable, carbon-free source of power. It’s adding up to a surprising new reality: artificial intelligence, the emblem of the future, is reviving dormant nuclear plants in its voracious quest for electricity. "Fundamentally, it's 1960s technology," said David Hess, who served as Pennsylvania’s secretary of environmental protection in the early 2000s and is a skeptic of the TMI deal. Behind the revival of an old plant is the spiraling energy demand of data centers. Goldman Sachs projects that AI and data centers will gobble up 8 percent of total US power demand by 2030 compared to the current 3 percent. Critics warn that could be a problem. “There is still much we don’t know about the environmental impact of AI but some of the data we do have is concerning,” said Golestan Radwan, the Chief Digital Officer of the United Nations Environment Programme in a statement issued Saturday ahead of the UN General Assembly. The post cited the technology’s massive consumption of electricity, water and critical minerals as top concerns. The tech industry doesn’t see it that way; instead, companies say they are committed to carbon-free resources like nuclear as they keep the U.S. ahead of global competition on AI. "This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative,” Bobby Hollis, vice president of energy at Microsoft, said in a statement. In March, Amazon signed an agreement with Talen Energy’s Susquehanna nuclear plant in Pennsylvania to buy a data center it powered. Meta said it supports “carbon free energy technologies, including nuclear power.” The Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan is in the process of getting authorized to reopen, which could help feed demand fueled by the increase in electric vehicles, domestic manufacturing hubs and new data centers. It’s a renaissance nuclear advocates dreamed of for years, and tech money has made it possible. “It's the first time -- at least to my knowledge -- in this country that a big, well-capitalized company has come in outside of the nuclear industry and made this big commitment to nuclear electricity,” said Steve Nesbit, who served as president of the American Nuclear Society and was a longtime nuclear engineer at major utility Duke Energy. Some lawmakers including Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) have questioned whether the U.S. should advance nuclear energy without a solution to nuclear waste and legacy pollution. But the Microsoft deal comes as more lawmakers and the White House are bullish on nuclear. “An American nuclear energy resurgence is beginning,” Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) said in a statement. Earlier in September, the White House launched a task force to help boost energy production for AI data centers. The Biden administration convened industry executives for a roundtable on the task force — including chiefs of Nvidia, OpenAI and Microsoft — but without environmental leaders. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Monday suggested that companies band together to utilize small modular reactors as AI and data centers drive up clean power demand. “In fact, if you could cluster a number of them together, they could order a 12-pack, and that could take small modular reactors to scale,” Granholm said. That could take years to materialize — though lawmakers are trying to change that — as getting new plants licensed in the U.S. has become an expensive and cumbersome process thanks in part to the Three Mile Island accident. Dormant plants, including TMI, have a clearer, quicker path — though there aren’t many that could feasibly restart. Power grid experts say Iowa’s Duane Arnold plant is likely the only other nuclear plant that could be revived after TMI and Palisades. Most nuclear plants that have been retired for years have been “permanently disabled,” according to Rich Powell, CEO of the Clean Energy Buyers Association, which represents some of the country’s biggest commercial power customers -- including Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft. “But I think it's fair to say that folks are taking a hard look at every one of them that would be technically possible to restart,” he added.
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