Three Mile Island nuclear plant makes comeback with $1B in federal backing to meet increasing energy demands

Microsoft and Constellation Energy are teaming up to restart the long-dormant Three Mile Island nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania. 

The companies are backed by a $1 billion federal energy loan, part of what Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez calls a nuclear power "renaissance."

"We're getting interest in new builds all over the spectrum," Dominguez said. 

"So, large units like this one, smaller modular reactors that we've talked to the president about, but I've never seen anything like the renaissance that is going on."

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"Whether it's red state, blue state, everybody's talking about nuclear energy. Everybody wants to build the next generation," he added. 

Harris Faulkner and "The Faulkner Focus" team got an exclusive tour inside the Three Mile Island plant, where Faulkner spoke with Dominguez and Energy Secretary Chris Wright about growing public interest in nuclear power, especially among younger generations.

Wright tried to assuage fears about nuclear power given that Three Mile Island was the site of a partial nuclear reactor meltdown in 1979.

"It's our generation that remembers Three Mile Island," Wright told Faulkner, referring to the meltdown and subsequent shuttering of the site. 

"No one got injured at Three Mile Island. It was scary, but it wasn't actually a big public health event at all. It was just scary."

Wright described the struggle to redeem nuclear power as safe and effective in the eyes of skeptics.

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"It's too easy to sell fear. It's hard to sell reassurance. If you look at the history of the nuclear industry from its start to today, it's the safest energy source of any on the planet," he said. 

"Its future is [going to] be even safer with better technology and new designs. But there is simply no safer way to produce energy, hands down, than nuclear."

Demand for energy has soared with the proliferation of artificial intelligence, which requires a significant amount of power to run at a large scale. 

President Donald Trump's administration is pushing to expand energy infrastructure to support AI data center growth and reduce American reliance on foreign power sources.

"AI is [going to] be transformative technology, but we can't be second place," Wright told Faulkner, arguing that nuclear plants like Three Mile Island will be necessary for the U.S. to remain competitive on the world stage.

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"If China is well ahead of the United States in AI, they will become economically and militarily the dominant power in the world," he warned.

Microsoft has agreed to purchase electricity for the next 20 years from the plant's remaining reactor, which was not involved in the 1979 partial meltdown, to help power its growing artificial intelligence and data center operations.

While the federal government will not operate the site, the Energy Department is offering a $1 billion loan to help speed the reactor's restart after it was shut down in 2019.

Environmental groups and nuclear safety advocates have raised concerns about reopening the site of a partial nuclear meltdown, but Wright argued the plant is safe and called it the "tip of the spear" in a broader nuclear energy comeback.