By Timothy Gardner and Leila Kearney
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on Friday it has not yet received a request from Constellation Energy to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor.
Constellation and Microsoft (NASDAQ:) have signed a data center agreement to help restart a nuclear reactor on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania by 2028. The reactor has been closed since 2019.
“At this point, there is nothing ahead of us in terms of the application,” said NRC spokesman Scott Purnell. “It is up to Constellation to explain its rationale for restarting, so we stand ready to work with the company on next steps.”
Constellation said it plans to apply for a permit but did not immediately provide a timeline for doing so. “We anticipate the NRC review will be completed in 2027,” a company spokesman said.
Nuclear power advocates complain that the NRC takes too long to review licenses, and a law signed by President Joe Biden this year is meant to help address that problem. But with demand for energy rising for the first time in decades, the NRC is considering a slew of applications from new, high-tech nuclear reactors and an application from a mothballed reactor in Michigan called the Palisades, which if approved could be the first U.S. reactor to come back from a restart.
Purnell said the NRC would use existing review processes to consider any licenses for the Trinidad and Tobago plant. Some opponents of quickly reopening shuttered nuclear power plants have petitioned the NRC, saying the agency should adopt new rules for such cases, since no shuttered U.S. nuclear power plant has ever been revived.