Big Tech’s Big Bet: Nuclear Power’s Revival
It might have seemed like an unusual headline: Microsoft is investing $1.6 billion to restart Three Mile Island. This nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, which saw a partial meltdown in 1979, is now attracting significant investment from the tech giant. While the 1979 incident, in which no one died, set the nuclear industry back years, Microsoft’s move signals a renewed interest in nuclear energy as a critical component of a sustainable energy future.
This is hallowed ground in the nuclear industry,” said Joe Dominguez, CEO of Constellation Energy, which owns about half of America’s 54 nuclear plants (including Three Mile Island).
Dominguez explains that the 1979 accident led to thousands of changes in nuclear power protocols and procedures. He notes that the site’s second reactor continued to operate until 2019, when it closed for economic reasons. Factors such as cheap natural gas, low demand, and a lack of policy support for nuclear energy contributed to plant closures across the country.
The driving force behind Microsoft’s interest lies in the tech industry’s climate goals and their burgeoning AI demands. Companies like Google and Microsoft have pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions. While they have invested heavily in wind and solar energy, the massive electricity requirements of AI data centers have prompted them to seek more reliable power sources.
Dominguez emphasizes that restarting the existing Three Mile Island facility is both quicker and less expensive than building a new nuclear plant. “It’s at least 10 times cheaper than building a new plant,” he said. “And we think we could get it going in about three years, versus the last plant that was built, [which] took almost 10 years.”
However, if a tech company doesn’t have a retired nuclear plant ready, the next step is developing new ones. Amazon and Google made substantial investments in nuclear power just weeks after Microsoft’s announcement.
Google’s Pursuit of Advanced Nuclear
Google is supplementing its extensive green energy investments with a new type of nuclear technology: small modular reactors (SMRs). Michael Terrell, who leads Google’s decarbonization efforts, explains that these are not the large cooling-tower facilities of the past. He notes that because they are designed to be modular, they can be combined to form bigger power plants. The first advanced nuclear reactors are anticipated to come online by 2030.
“We’re not going to do just one reactor, but we hope to buy from what will be a series of reactors that follow that,” Terrell said.
Nuclear power offers consistent energy generation, which is critical for AI data centers.
Google is funding Kairos Power to develop and build this new generation of reactors. Kairos is constructing three small plants in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where uranium material for the first atomic bomb was processed. CEO Mike Laufer says their reactors use fuel pebbles, about the size of golf balls, rather than fuel rods. These pebbles are mostly graphite, with tiny uranium kernels. Each pebble has as much power capacity as four tons of coal. Laufer claims the carbon dioxide emissions are zero.
Kairos reactors operate at lower power and pressure, which reduces risks. A mockup of a “pebble” to fuel a nuclear reactor.
While this technology sounds promising, significant challenges remain. Sharon Squassoni, a George Washington University professor who researched nuclear safety for 15 years, believes tech companies may face difficulties. Her concern is that it will take too long and be too expensive.
“I’m pretty sure they will,” Squassoni replied. “Do you think there’s a little bit of tech-bro overconfidence therein?”
Kairos’ Mike Laufer acknowledged the challenges, stating, “Yes, it’s really hard. I will totally agree with anyone. But we’re doing it at smaller scale to start, and then building on that in the future.”
Joe Dominguez’s team is preparing Three Mile Island for Microsoft and they’re even renaming the plant the Crane Clean Energy Center. He states that if AI is igniting a renaissance in American nuclear, it’s “full steam ahead.”
When questioned about why new plants take longer and cost more than initially estimated,
“Honest answer? We don’t build enough of them,” Dominguez said.
He advocates for a standardized design approach to streamline construction. “You don’t want to build a unique design; you want to do kind of a cookie-cutter, one-after-another design.”
According to Dominguez, both Republicans and Democrats understand the benefit of a common design approach.
“Everybody understands that if you build a common design, you build a bunch of them,” he said.
Google’s Michael Terrell shares the belief that the company will reach its zero-carbon goal by 2030.
“It is an incredibly ambitious goal: 24/7 carbon-free energy everywhere we operate every way around the world,” he said. “But it’s something we’re working very hard to achieve, and we hope to get there.”
