The operator of the Three Mile Island nuclear energy plant will reopen the power to generate electrical energy for Microsoft Corp. information facilities.
Constellation Power Era LLC, the most important renewable vitality producer within the U.S., introduced the initiative at this time. The corporate will provide energy from Three Mile Island to Microsoft beneath a newly signed 20-year contract. Earlier than reopening the plant, Constellation will perform wide-ranging renovations and safe recent regulatory approvals.
The corporate plans to produce Microsoft with energy from the Three Mile Island plant’s Unit 1 reactor. Unit 2, a reactor housed in an instantly adjoining facility, skilled a partial nuclear meltdown in 1979. The incident was the worst nuclear energy plant accident in U.S. historical past.
The Unit 1 reactor earmarked for Microsoft was not affected by the accident. The system continued working till 2019, when Constellation retired it “prematurely for financial causes.” The corporate’s new 20-year cope with Microsoft will see the power that homes Unit 1 reopen because the Crane Clear Power Heart.
“This settlement is a significant milestone in Microsoft’s efforts to assist decarbonize the grid in assist of our dedication to grow to be carbon unfavorable,” mentioned Bobby Hollis, Microsoft’s vice chairman of vitality. “Microsoft continues to collaborate with vitality suppliers to develop carbon-free vitality sources to assist meet the grids’ capability and reliability wants.”
In accordance with Bloomberg, Constellation will spend $1.6 billion to renovate the Three Mile Island plant. The corporate plans to improve the power’s cooling and management techniques in addition to its turbine, generator and major energy transformer. The improve shall be adopted by a security and environmental overview.
Earlier than it reopens, the Crane Clear Power Heart must be authorized by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Fee. Constellation may also require permits from state and native businesses. The reopening is anticipated to be supported by tax credit and different federal subsidies from the Inflation Discount Act.
Constellation plans to deliver the plant on-line in 2028. The ability is anticipated to generate 835,000 megawatts of electrical energy, which is sufficient to energy greater than 800,000 houses. Constellation hopes to function it by means of not less than 2054.
The plant will assist Microsoft meet the rising energy necessities of its cloud information facilities. The services’ rising electrical energy utilization is pushed partially by the big variety of graphics processing items that they host. Microsoft reportedly hopes to deploy 1.4 million GPUs in its information heart community by 12 months’s finish.
It’s estimated that Nvidia Corp.’s H100 graphics card, which was its flagship information heart chip till final 12 months, consumes greater than 3,700 kilowatt-hours of electrical energy per 12 months. That’s equal to a low double-digit share of a typical house’s annual energy utilization. The successor to the H100, the Blackwell B200, consumes much more energy.
Alongside Nvidia chips, Microsoft is deploying internally designed synthetic intelligence chips in its information facilities. The corporate makes use of liquid cooling expertise to dissipate the warmth generated by these processors. Microsoft has developed customized cooling techniques, dubbed sidekicks by its engineers, that may connect on to a server rack and flow into chilly liquid by means of the {hardware} inside.
Photograph: Constellation Power
Your vote of assist is essential to us and it helps us hold the content material FREE.
One click on under helps our mission to supply free, deep, and related content material.
Be part of our neighborhood on YouTube
Be part of the neighborhood that features greater than 15,000 #CubeAlumni specialists, together with Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Applied sciences founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and lots of extra luminaries and specialists.
THANK YOU