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By Valerie Volcovici

NEW YORK, Oct 7 (Reuters) - The Biden administration is

working on plans to bring additional decommissioned nuclear

power reactors back online to help meet soaring demand for

emissions-free electricity, White House climate adviser Ali

Zaidi said on Monday.

Two such projects are already underway, including the

planned recommissioning of Holtec's Palisades nuclear plant in

Michigan and the potential restart of a unit at Constellation

Energy's ( CEG ) Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, near

the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history.

Asked if additional shuttered plants could be restarted,

Zaidi said: "We're working on it in a very concrete way. There

are two that I can think of."

He declined to identify the power plants or provide further

details about the effort.

Speaking at the Reuters IMPACT conference in New York, Zaidi

said repowering existing dormant nuclear plants was part of a

three-pronged strategy of President Joe Biden's administration

to bring more nuclear power online to fight climate change and

boost production.

The other two prongs include development of small modular

reactors (SMRs) for certain applications, and continuing

development of next generation, advanced nuclear reactors.

Biden has called for a tripling of U.S. nuclear power

capacity to fuel energy demand that is accelerating in part due

to expansion of power hungry technologies like artificial

intelligence and cloud computing.

Last week, the Biden administration said it closed a $1.52

billion loan to resurrect the Palisades nuclear plant in

Michigan, which would take two years to re-open.

Constellation and Microsoft ( MSFT ), meanwhile, signed a

power deal last month to help resurrect a unit of the

Pennsylvania plant, which Constellation hopes will also receive

government support.

Zaidi told the conference that the U.S. Navy on Monday had

requested information to build SMRs on a half dozen bases. "SMR

is a technology that is not a decades-away play. It's one that

companies in the United States are looking to deploy in this

decade," he said.

Zaidi also addressed the woes that have beset a separate

Biden clean energy goal, to bring 30 gigawatts of offshore wind

capacity online by the end of the decade.

The administration shelved offshore wind lease sales this year

in both Oregon and the Gulf of Mexico due to low demand from

companies, as high costs, equipment issues and supply chain

challenges hit other projects.

Zaidi said at least half of the 30GW goal is already under

construction and that some of the early snags provide helpful

learning for future projects.

"I am pretty optimistic about the next of wave of projects

where we will have a domestic supply chain and hopefully better

cost to capital relative to what projects are facing right now,"

he said.