Infamous site of America's worst ever nuclear disaster makes controversial move

The nuclear plant that caused America's worst reactor accident will soon be restarting operations to provide power to tech giant Microsoft for its data centers.

The Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania is all set to become functional again by 2028 as a part of a 20-year agreement, Constellation Energy announced on Friday.

As per the agreement, Unit 1 of the plant, which 'operated at industry-leading levels of safety and reliability for decades before being shut down for economic reasons exactly five years ago,' will be the section of the reactor that will be turned on again after being shut down in 2019 .

The new 20-year agreement is still pending approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The move is designed to help Microsoft meet its commitment to be 'carbon negative' by 2030.

Constellation said it hopes to bring Unit 1 online in 2028 and pursue a license renewal from regulators to extend the plant's operation to at least 2054.

But the preparation for the restart requires 'significant investments' including the turbine, generator, main power transformer and cooling and control systems, Constellation said.

Jacopo Buongiorno, a nuclear science and engineering professor and director of MIT's Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems, predicted that the cost to restart the reactor will run into the billions of dollars.

'It all depends on what's the state of the components, the systems,' the expert noted.

According to BBC News , Constellation said it plans to invest $1.6 billion in to upgrade the plant.

The publication also stated that the plant is expected to create 3,400 direct and indirect jobs and add more than 800 megawatts of carbon-free electricity to the grid.

The plant, on an island in the Susquehanna River just outside Harrisburg, quickly became the worst commercial nuclear power accident after the Unit 2 reactor suffered a partial meltdown due to mechanical failure and human error in 1979.

The incident, which occurred on March 28 of that year, rated five on the International Nuclear Event Scale from 0 to 7.

The accident led to 'very small' releases of radioactivity, according to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which likened the radiation level to a chest X-ray.

All workers were evacuated, and the disaster took 14 years to clean up, but studies on whether the radiation affected the local populace have been inconclusive.

Although no one died, and no immediate injuries were linked to the incident, no new nuclear power plants have been built in the United States since then.

Constellation's announcement comes after a wave of coal-fired and nuclear power plants have shut down in the past decade as competition from cheap natural gas flooded power markets.

In the wake of the news about nuclear plant restarting, several took to X to voice their concernt.

'This technology cannot be worth it, truly,' one user wrote.

Another person said, 'Who else thinks this is a bad idea?'