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NRC holds first public meeting on Three Mile Island

restart

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Constellation wants to restore Unit 1's operating license

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NRC requests more emergency, environmental restart plan

details

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Watchdog group questions plans, including simulator

(New throughout, includes NRC questions and watchdog group

comments)

By Laila Kearney

NEW YORK, Oct 25 (Reuters) - U.S. nuclear regulators

kicked off a long-winding process to consider Constellation

Energy's ( CEG ) unprecedented plans to restart its retired

Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in an initial public

meeting held on Friday.

Constellation, which announced last month that it had signed

a 20-year power purchase agreement with Microsoft ( MSFT ) that

would enable reopening the Unit 1 reactor at Three Mile Island,

made its case before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to

restore its operating license for the plant.

The company also sought to extend the life of the plant and

change its name to the Crane Clean Energy Center.

Three Mile Island, which is located in Pennsylvania on an

island in the Susquehanna River, is widely known for the 1979

partial meltdown of its Unit 2 reactor. That unit has been

permanently shut and is being decommissioned.

Members of the NRC requested details about the emergency

evacuation plans for the restarted plant and information about

the commercial deal with Microsoft ( MSFT ), while imploring

Constellation to quickly work on permitting related to its water

use for the plant.

The NRC also raised questions about how the restart of Unit

1 would intersect with the decommissioning of Unit 2, which

began last year, nearly 45 years after the partial meltdown.

Utah-based nuclear services company EnergySolutions owns

Unit 2 and related infrastructure, while Constellation owns Unit

1 and the site's land.

Unit 1 shut down due to economic reasons in 2019, some 15

years before the operating license was set to expire. At the

time, Constellation said it did not anticipate a restart.

Constellation now expects to restart the 835-megawatt

Unit 1 in 2028, delivering power to the grid to offset

electricity use by Microsoft's ( MSFT ) data center in the region.

A recent jump in

U.S. electricity demand

, driven in part by Big Tech's

energy-intensive AI

data center expansion has led to a revival of the country's

struggling nuclear industry.

No retired reactor has been restarted before. The

Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, owned by

Holtec

, is also in the process of being resurrected.

Earlier this year, Constellation completed initial

testing on the reactor and determined it was physically, and

financially, possible to resurrect it.

"We understand how we shut it down and we have a good idea

of how we are going to restart this," plant manager Trevor Orth

said at the NRC meeting.

The physical work to restore Three Mile Island, which is

expected to start in the first quarter of 2025, cost at least

$1.6 billion, and could require thousands of workers, still

needs licensing modifications and permitting.

Local activists have also vowed to fight the project over

safety and environmental concerns, including the storage of

nuclear waste on the site.

Scott Portzline, who is with nuclear watchdog group Three

Mile Island Alert in Harrisburg, questioned the site's backup

power and criticized the proposed nuclear control room simulator

used for training.

"I have a constitutional right to know how my nuclear plants

are operating and the utility ought to be able to answer that,"

Portzline said during the meeting.

Local businesses and the building trades made comments in

support of plant's comeback in the meeting.

Under the National Environmental Policy Act, the NRC will be

required to complete an environmental assessment within the

final year of any restart. The plant will require other

environmental permits, including ones for air emissions and

water pollutants.