DAUPHIN COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) — They gave tours like this one back in the 1970s, when the reactor was new, and the visuals aren't too different: lots of big analog dials in the main control room of Three Mile Island's Unit One, with a smattering of touchscreens and other newer technology.

And the vintage technology — or what passed for technology in 1974 — is just fine with the people who run the place. For one thing, no risk of hacking for equipment not networked with cyber-anything. For another?

"For me as an operator, it's very comforting to know that if I'm going to start this pump, I'm going to grab this control switch, and I'm going to move it to start it," said Craig Smith, the regulatory assurance manager for what's now called the Crane Clean Energy Center.

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That matters more than it has in years, because sure enough, he might get to restart it again as soon as 2028 under an agreement to spend $1.6 billion modernizing the plant to supply Microsoft with energy — to power its artificial intelligence infrastructure — for at least 20 years.

"We should be able to clean up the pipes, add the water, add the oil, clean the motors — we should be able to turn the plant back on again," Bryan Hanson, the chief generation office for Constellation Energy — which owns Reactor One — said during a media tour Wednesday, the first since the plant was decommissioned in 2019.

Hanson knows it's impossible to talk about producing nuclear energy again on Three Mile Island without talking about you-know-what at Unit Two in 1979 but said the near-disaster is the reason Unit One — until its decommissioning for economic reasons — had the "highest performing levels of nuclear plants across the United States, arguably better than any one in the world."

"And that's borne of all the lessons learned from Unit Two," said Hanson, who acknowledged the idea that the plant is ready to restart is a simplification of what will be an expensive, arduous effort to upgrade the facility and gain regulatory approvals.

Hanson said the facility will need 600 permanent, full-time workers, most of whom will earn six-figure salaries and support numerous other local jobs in the places where they shop and eat.

But Eric Epstein of Three Mile Island Alert, a nuclear watchdog, said the plan is a boondoggle to support Constellation and Microsoft on the backs of taxpayers.

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"This is a sweetheart deal," Epstein said. "The energy from TMI is going to one client, Microsoft, and it's going to their data centers in Northern Virginia, Ohio and Illinois."

Hanson said Microsoft's promise to purchase as much energy as the plant produces is what makes the restart viable, but Unit One's energy will feed the broader electricity grid, and Microsoft will obtain its energy from various sources that feed the grid.

Epstein — citing efforts by Constellation to obtain federal loan guarantees to finance the restart — disputed assertions by the company that unlike a restart in Michigan subidized by federal and state aid, the Unit One restart will be financed privately.

"It's a subsidy because the taxpayers are underwriting the loan, and in the case of a new reactor just being built in South Carolina, the company defaulted," Epstein said, referring to a project there known as V.C. Summer . "It's a huge risk, and it lowers the interest rates for the company. Constellation is going to save about $120 million."

Hanson said the government isn't financing the project — and the project isn't contingent on getting the loan guarantees — so it's not a subsidy.

"Not a single nickel," Hanson said. "[It's] 1.6 billion dollar out of our pockets based on a long-term power purchase agreement from Microsoft."

Epstein also said apart from the capital costs, the nuclear energy itself produced at the plant will be subsidized to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Hanson said Constellation and Microsoft won't benefit from any programs not already available to other energy producers and customers.