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Three Mile Island is getting a jolt back to life, courtesy of a $1 billion Trump administration loan to restart its nuclear reactor.
The Department of Energy announced Tuesday a cash infusion in the form of a $1 billion loan to Baltimore-based Constellation Energy to restart a nuclear reactor at the site that has the potential to better secure the Mid-Atlantic grid and power as many as 800,000 homes on renewable power.
The Three Mile Island site in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania melted down in 1979 when a loss-of-coolant malfunction released radioactive iodine, but one of the reactors remained operational for several years.
“One of the biggest challenges American people have faced over the last several years has been the rising price of electricity … and when we arrived; the Trump administration; in town there were plans to close 100gW more of affordable, reliable, secure dispatchable electricity generation,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said.
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“We want to bring as much net addition of dispatchable, reliable electricity onto the grid to stop these price rises in electricity and increase American capacity to generate firm, reliable, electricity so we can reassure manufacturing in our country, and we can stay ahead in the AI race,” Wright said.
While Reactor Unit Two has remained offline since its malfunction that March morning, Reactor Unit One kept running until the 2010s, when its owners shut it down, citing primarily economic reasons.
Constellation Energy previously announced it had hoped to use the site in the future to power AI data centers after forging a deal with Microsoft.
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In July, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission held a public meeting at Penn State—Harrisburg to discuss reopening the facility, now called the Crane Clean Energy Center.
Energy Department Loan Programs Office director Greg Beard told reporters Tuesday that a $1 billion loan has been extended to Constellation to restart what was Three Mile Island.
Beard said the 800MW potential of the site is crucial to supporting regional power grid facilitator PJM with “stable, affordable baseload power.”
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Beard said the project could come to fruition as early as 2027.
Wright said some of America’s biggest energy challenges come in terms of affordability with rising utility rates for the past several years.
When Trump took office, he said, he reversed previously ongoing efforts to close up as much as 100gW of affordable and reliable energy through coal and gas, while adding several nuclear plants closed during the Biden years. The secretary called the Three Mile Island project “exactly what America needs” and proof the Trump administration is looking at an all-of-the-above approach to American energy dominance.
Beard added there is an “active pipeline” of applications to his office for support for future nuclear, coal, oil, gas and critical minerals projects – and that his office is actively seeking and reviewing projects that can reinvigorate the energy supply chain.
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Constellation signed a 20-year lease agreement for the Three Mile Island site in late 2024, and renamed it after former CEO Christopher Crane.
The effort to reopen the once-infamous site in the middle of the Susquehanna River upstream from Columbia and downstream from Lemoyne also has bipartisan support.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro previously called the state’s nuclear industry a key player in green energy.
“[It provides] carbon-free electricity that helps reduce emissions and grow Pennsylvania’s economy,” he said.
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