Microsoft’s Three Mile Island deal is a big step toward matching data center energy demands, but it's not alone — AWS, Oracle, and now Google are all hot for nuclear power

Microsoft has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with energy provider Constellation in a move that will power data centers with nuclear energy.

Under the agreement, Microsoft will buy energy from a newly reopened plant as part of its wider goal to match the power use of its data centers in Pennsylvania-Jersey-Maryland (PJM) with carbon-free energy.

The partnership will utilize ‘Unit 1’ of the ‘Three Mile Island’ site in Pennsylvania, where a partial nuclear meltdown in ‘Unit 2’ took place over 40 years ago.

According to Constellation, Unit 1 is a “fully independent” facility and was not impacted by the accident.

Significant investment will be made to restore the plant and its equipment, the two companies confirmed, which is eventually set to create 3,400 new jobs and add over 800 megawatts (MW) of carbon-free electricity to the surrounding grid.

Before Unit 1 was retired on economic grounds in 2019, the plant was capable of generating 837 MW of electricity, or enough to power over 800,000 average homes. By its final year of operation, the plant was at maximum capacity output for 96.3% of the time, well above the industry average.

“Powering industries critical to our nation’s global economic and technological competitiveness, including data centers, requires an abundance of energy that is carbon-free and reliable every hour of every day, and nuclear plants are the only energy sources that can consistently deliver on that promise,” said Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez.

Microsoft’s VP of energy, Bobby Hollis, echoed this sentiment, describing the partnership as a significant step in the firm’s efforts to decarbonize the grid and push toward carbon negativity.

The plant will be renamed Crane Clean Energy Center (CCEC), in honor of former Constellation CEO Chris Crane who passed away in April. The facility is expected to be online by 2028.

Microsoft isn't the only hyperscaler eyeing nuclear energy 

Microsoft isn’t the only firm sizing up the nuclear option to power its data centers. Most of the other major cloud providers have announced similar initiatives over the past few months as carbon emissions skyrocket.

Though it hit a roadblock in July, AWS announced plans in May to invest $650 million in a data center adjacent to a 2.5 gigawatt nuclear power station also located in Pennsylvania.

Oracle has revealed similar goals in this regard, albeit not at the same scale. The firm recently announced plans to power a new 1GW data center through the use of small modular reactors (SMRs).

Though Google has yet to announce any formal plans, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Nikkei that he was considering how the firm might utilize nuclear power.

Google has also been looking at other energy sources such as solar and geothermal in a bid to drive down emissions and push towards carbon-free energy production.