Plan to restart Pa.'s Three Mile Island nuclear plant unveiled

The rumors are fact.

After months of hints and speculation, the owner of the closed nuclear power station on Three Mile Island is announcing today that it has decided to try to bring it back online by 2028.

The restart would apply only to the island's Unit 1 reactor, which was closed by then-owner Exelon in 2019 as it started to turn into a money loser. Exelon said at that time that the plant's operational costs meant its power could no longer compete with cheap natural gas flooding the energy market.

But Joe Dominguez, CEO of successor owner Constellation Energy, told PennLive Thursday tidal changes in the energy market — both in terms of increased demand in the Information Age economy and concerns about the reliability of the existing grid — have made nuclear viable again.

First, weather-related incidents such as the 2021 deep freeze in Texas raised new concerns about the reliability of a power grid reliant mostly on fossil fuels and renewable energy sources.

That in turn caused Big Tech firms — many with prominent commitments to sustainability to meet — to question whether they could meet their needs through renewables "every hour of the day" and to show a new openness towards nuclear.

(According to a recent report by the Electric Power Research Institute , the data centers that fuel artificial intelligence and other technological innovations are expected to eat 9 percent of the United States' power supply by 2030, which is more than twice the share they use at present.)

Finally, Dominguez said, overall electric demand is growing again because of a variety of factors that range from growth in the electric vehicle market, to "on-shoring" of some manufacturing in reaction to pandemic-era supply chain issues; to the fact that many American households have, by now, wrung out the efficiencies to be gained from more modern heating systems, appliances and lightbulbs.

For Constellation, that all prompted a quiet, internal look at the idled Three Mile Island plant starting in early 2023.

"I said to my leadership team: 'We've got to start thinking about restarting this reactor, because the power is going to be needed and we need to be there,'" Dominguez said.

Inspectors gave good reviews on the plant's overall condition, though some sizable capital investments will be needed, such as a new transformer. Many of those capital decisions have already been made.

But the firm had made no public commitments to the project until today.

For TMI, it all came together this summer, Dominguez said, when Constellation completed a purchase agreement with Microsoft to buy the equivalent of all the new power the restarted reactor — which it wants to rename and operate as the Crane Clean Energy Center — will generate.

Microsoft is interested because the zero-emission nuclear power will help that corporation meet its own pledge to replace all the energy it is taking off the grid to power its data centers in the Northeast with carbon-free power.

And that, you see, has become another of nuclear's top selling points in the 21st Century: That the billowing clouds that puff out of the cooling towers are steam, not the kind of pollutants that are bringing about climate change.

"This is big." This is a massive, $1.6 billion undertaking that will require approval of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and state agencies. It will also need permission from the PJM Interconnection, which monitors the energy grid in 13 mid-Atlantic and midwestern states, to put the power back onto the grid.

Some context.

"This represents more energy than all of the renewable energy that Pennsylvania has developed over the last 30 years," Dominguez said. "And at a level of reliability that is the best that mankind knows. So, this is big."

Federal data bears that out.

According to latest Federal Energy Information Administration data, renewables including solar and wind power as a class made up 3.3 percent of Pennsylvania-based energy generation in June, or about 730 megawatts.

Before it was retired, TMI had a generating capacity of 837 megawatts, which Constellation said is enough to power more than 800,000 average homes.

Dominguez said Thursday the plant's retooling will be done completely on Constellation's dime, with the possible exception of a federal loan program that might make some of the needed capital available at a lower interest rate than could be had in the commercial markets.

"But that's not free money," he stressed. "That's just money you get at a slightly lower interest rate, and we'll have to repay all that."

That's vastly different from a proposed restart in MIchigan, where state leaders have thus far committed $300 million to a similar proposed restart of the Palisades nuclear plant off the shores of Lake Michigan.

That's also where the Microsoft deal comes in.

Constellation did not release the financial value of the Microsoft contract Thursday, but Dominguez was clear: "Without Microsoft this doesn't happen... Without a client being there to pay for the energy that just couldn't have gotten over the finish line."

That said, Dominguez added Constellation values the ability to chart its own course that working outside of government subsidies provides.

"That's hard, because we were looking at other states that had been far more aggressive (than Pennsylvania) in doing these things, and we were saying 'Boy we wish it were here.' But it wasn't. So we had to deal with that reality and move forward," he said.

In 2018-19, Exelon and other nuclear operators fought unsuccessfully for policy changes that proponents said could have helped keep Three Mile Island open. Earlier this year, state Senate leaders gave a cool reception to a Shapiro Administration proposal to award unused state tax credits to the company.

'We've talked to our employees about leading the energy transition (away from fossil fuels to cleaner power); it's the reason why people want to come to Constellation, to be a part of this thing. So it becomes more than just a financial consideration.

"You want to go and get it done because that's what leadership looks like. I hope that gets appreciated," Dominguez said.

Will it be safe? Activists in the Harrisburg area have already held several protests against a potential reopening of TMI. That's a sign of the communal scar tissue left from the scary March 1979 accident at TMI Unit 2, which still stands out as the worst commercial nuclear accident in the United States.

Unit 2 has different ownership than Unit 1, and is much deeper into its decommissioning process.

Even so, a protest rally at the Capitol earlier this month included women who lived near the plant during the 1979 accident, who spoke of health, safety and environmental concerns prompted by the potential reopening.

But supporters point to a poll conducted last month by Susquehanna Polling and Research Inc. in Harrisburg that found 57% of respondents would support a reopening of the Unit 1 reactor as long as it doesn't include new taxes or increased electricity rates.

Dominguez said Thursday his company is sensitive to the history attached to Three Mile Island, and because of it he welcomes the public scrutiny that he expects will come along with the pending restart process.

"We should have that discussion and folks who are concerned should come to the NRC and have that principled discussion because we should answer every one of their questions."

He also argued that the nuclear industry is in a far better place than it was in two generations ago.

"Out of TMI came thousands of innovations in equipment, construction, processes, all of that stuff... TMI is the reason the industry become the best.

But in the end, he sounded confident about his firm's ability to run a better, safer plant if given the chance.

"I know it will be ready to go because it will be even better than the day we shut it down. And then, it was the best in the nation," Dominguez contended. "To me, doing this at TMI is the perfect place to rebirth the industry.

"Question us all you want on our capabilities and what we put into the plant. But don't question our leadership here because we're doing something here... that others aren't doing. There's a lot of people flapping their lips and wringing their hands around reliability and other things.

"I'm putting $1.6 billion dollars into the middle of Pennsylvania to bring back an asset that this nation desperately needs."

The economic boon

TMI's closure cost central Pennsylvania more than 600 permanent positions at a plant where salaries of $80,000 and higher were not uncommon.

Unit 1 is now in its own form of nuclear mothballing - its spent fuel has been removed from wet storage pools, and is now in dry cask storage on the island.

It is one of three idled nuclear plants nationally being eyed for a restart.

NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan told PennLive the agency is still reviewing a proposal from Holtec to restart the Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan. In both cases, Sheehan added, a restart represents "new territory for the NRC."

If the restart is approved, Dominguez said he expects the plant to be generating a capacity at least equal to the 834 megawatts TMI was rated at prior to the 2019 closure. Constellation then would plan to seek an extension of the license to 2054, Dominguez said.

That is music to local government and economic leaders' ears.

First, a reopening could be expected to bring back 600 permanent jobs. At the time of the 2019 closure, TMI said its staff had an average salary in excess of $80,000.

Dominguez said construction contracting jobs should be picking up at the island in short order.

Then, there's the biennial influx of about 1,200 extra jobs for union laborers during periodic refuelings that provided a month or more of work at hourly pay rates starting in the mid-20s and up.

"The Crain Clean Energy Center will support thousands of family-sustaining jobs for decades to come," said Rob Bair, president of the Pennsylvania State Building and Construction Trades Council, said in a Constellation news release Friday that used the plant's proposed new name. "It will help make Pennsylvania a leader in attracting and retaining the types of reliable, clean energy jobs that will define the future."

TMI Unit 1 has been owned by Constellation since 2022, when it spun out of Exelon. The power generation company owns and operates 21 reactors nationwide, at 14 different locations including the Peach Bottom nuclear plant in York County and Limerick in Montgomery County.