A unit at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power plant will be restarted under the new power-sharing agreement with Microsoft, which it plans to use to power the data centers it operates as part of its push to artificial intelligence.
In a joint releaseMicrosoft and Constellation Energy, Pennsylvania’s main utility, said Three Mile Island Unit 1, a separate unit from the one that sparked the infamous shutdown nearly five decades ago, will be used to provide clean energy to the tech giant as and the artificial intelligence arms race. warm up
Constellation closed Unit 1 in 2019 due to operating losses. Unit 2 was shut down after the 1979 incident that saw a partial core meltdown that led to radioactive compounds being released into the environment.
Studies have produced a range of estimates for the number of deaths over the course of 30 years as a result of the release of radiation – but it is often cited as having set back America’s push for nuclear energy to a generation.
Today, energy has become the new currency of the kingdom for companies investing in artificial intelligence. That’s because the data centers tasked with running the complex calculations needed to power artificial intelligence applications require enormous amounts of power. Restarting Unit 1 will mean bringing 800 megawatts back onto the grid, greater than the amount of hydroelectric power provided by the Hoover Dam.
Additional shuttered nuclear plants now being considered for reactivation amid the broader AI data center push can be found in Michigan and Iowa, while half a dozen other states are reversing moratoriums on new nuclear plants .
Microsoft’s vice president of energy said the benefits of clean energy to revive the facility in a statement.
“This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft’s efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative,” said Bobby Hollis. “Microsoft continues to collaborate with energy providers to develop carbon-free energy sources to help meet the grid’s “capacity and reliability needs.”
Earlier this week, Microsoft and the investment group BlackRock announced a new $100 billion initiative to develop data centers for artificial intelligence. While the analysts are still debating what AI is pushing has performed to date, companies around the world see it as the next great business opportunity.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently shrugged off doubts about the payoff of AI, comparing it to the trajectory of the Industrial Revolution.
“There wasn’t that much industrial growth, and then it went away,” he said at a recent conference. “1817 in the United States in the 1940s was just one of those golden ages.”
This article was originally published in NBCNews.com