DOE gives Microsoft partner $1B loan to restart Three Mile Island reactor

https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/18/trump-doe-gives-microsoft-partner-1b-loan-to-restart-three-mile-island-reactor/

by pseudolus • 8 months ago

103 106 8 months ago

tombert• 8 months ago

Maybe someone can elaborate on this, since I know basically nothing about chemistry or nuclear physics; isn't Three Mile Island still completely irradiated and unsafe for humans to inhabit?

CivBase2• 8 months ago

The article says the reactor they are bringing back on was active until as recently as 2019, so it's safe to say it's probably not uninhabitable.

daemonologist2• 8 months ago

Unit 2 is the reactor that melted down and it has been shut down ever since (and partially decommissioned). Unit 1, a separate reactor at the same site, was operated normally until 2019 when it was shut down due to high costs. It was originally scheduled to be decommissioned by 2079 (sic) but is now being brought back online.

comrh• 8 months ago

If it wasn't profitable in 2019, why is profitable now? Because Microsoft is commiting to be a customer?

piperswe• 8 months ago

The Wikipedia page makes it seem like it's been largely cleaned up for decades:

In 1988, the NRC announced that, although it was possible to further decontaminate the Unit 2 site, the remaining radioactivity had been sufficiently contained as to pose no threat to public health and safety.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident

khuey• 8 months ago

No.

Chernobyl (which was a far worse accident) continued to produce power at other units on the same site for 14 years after the meltdown of unit 4.

egorfine2• 8 months ago

TMI was never irradiated and unsafe for humans to inhabit.

CivBase2• 8 months ago

How much would it cost to build a new reactor with comparable power output?

zdragnar2• 8 months ago

Cost varies with the site conditions. It's one of the many things that push nuclear construction costs up; every build needs to take into consideration the geographic nature of the site (bedrock levels, etc) and so every location requires customizations to the design.

With that said, while it doesn't provide numbers, the article does say the refurbishment (costing $1.6 billion, estimated) will be cheaper than a new build. It'll also likely be much faster, projected to open in 2028.

A quick google search puts construction costs of new nuclear of a Unit 2 size in the $5-10 billion range. 3 Mile Island itself was constructed for $2 billion in 2024 inflation-adjusted dollars. All in all, refurbishing sounds like a good bargain compared to a green field build.

daemonologist2• 8 months ago

There's not much to go off of on this subject in the US - only two successful reactor projects have been started since the 70s: Units 3 and 4 at Vogtle in Georgia*. They cost $15 billion each and bankrupted the remnants of Westinghouse (in combination with a similar project in South Carolina which was never finished).

*Many reactors started construction in the 70s and were finished in the 80s or 90s, plus Watts Bar Unit 2 which was started in 1972 and finished in 2016 for a total of $5 billion. The US also of course builds many naval reactors.

AnthonyMouse3• 8 months ago

There's not much to go off of on this subject in the US

The main problem is that things cost more per unit if you do them less. The first new reactor in decades is going to be stupid expensive because you have new people doing it who are learning things for the first time, which often means doing them over again, which is expensive. And then we didn't even get to see if the second unit at Vogtle could improve on the first because then COVID hit and made everything cost even more.

Whereas the interesting question is, how much do they each cost if you build them at scale?

rzerowan• 8 months ago

Beat for beat it would probably be cheaper to get the Chinese to do it.Cost per watt charts [1] show US builds still high while they are decreasing for the rest.

Apart from the obvious labour costs difference , theres also the skills at scale.Chinese have been on a continous buildout of new plants , so at this point they have designs/skilled teams for whom this is another routine at this point(i think 30+ under construction concurrently).The US builds are almost artisinal at this point.

And yeah at $1B , given prior examples , it expect them to be late and costs to baloon.Unless they use this as a template to upskill/retrain a workforce that will lead a new buildout so economies of scale take over and put downward pressure on the costs.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/22/climate/china...

lmm2• 8 months ago

Actually building it? Peanuts. Getting it through planning approval and the inevitable environmental etc. lawsuits? Infinite time and money.

peterfirefly• 8 months ago

Most of the cost is not in building -- it is in planning, wrestling with capricious government agencies, and rebuilding when said agencies come up with "improvements".

natmaka2• 8 months ago

There is less and less real willing (<=> project starting on the field) to do so because finance likes predictability ( https://x.com/SustainableTall/status/1619246745074139138 ) and competitors are booming ( see, for example, https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices and https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline

mitchbob• 8 months ago

https://archive.ph/YjljM

mmooss• 8 months ago

I wonder what the legal basis of the loan is. Congress controls the money; what authorization does the executive branch have for loaning $1 billion?

zdragnar2• 8 months ago

It's right in the article:

The debt facility is being made through the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO), which was formed under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to foster the growth of clean energy technologies

and, more importantly:

The Inflation Reduction Act, which passed during the Biden administration, created another pot of money under the LPO known as the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment program. That program was created to restore existing power plants to operation provided they avoid or reduce pollutants or greenhouse gas emissions. The Trump administration kept it largely in tact, rebranding it the Energy Dominance Financing Program.

imgabe• 8 months ago

It's in the article.

The debt facility is being made through the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO), which was formed under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to foster the growth of clean energy technologies.
The Inflation Reduction Act, which passed during the Biden administration, created another pot of money under the LPO known as the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment program. That program was created to restore existing power plants to operation provided they avoid or reduce pollutants or greenhouse gas emissions. The Trump administration kept it largely in tact, rebranding it the Energy Dominance Financing Program.

Congress passed the Energy Policy act of 2005 and then the Inflation Reduction Act allocating money to the DoE to make these loans.

int0x29• 8 months ago

Looks like this falls under existing congressionally appropriated spending for the DOE

aaronbrethorst• 8 months ago

Learn all about it from the guy who ran the office in the last administration!

https://www.ms.now/msnbc-podcast/msnbc/discussing-explosion-...

senectus1• 8 months ago

they will be dependent on their allies for fuel sources..

in a list of countries with uranium resverves 1-59 they're number 55!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_r...

stinkbeetle2• 8 months ago

Number 55 when sorted alphabetically, if you're talking about the USA.

lucaslazarus• 8 months ago

The U.S. is ranked #17 in that list at 101,900 tonnes, not #55.

UltraSane10• 8 months ago

Do you have any idea how little Uranium reactors use?

And in any case Australia host a LOT of uranium and is a very close ally and is happy to sell it to the US.

tjmc• 8 months ago

And we're even happier if you keep it!

PKop• 8 months ago

Did you honestly not look at the numbers in the chart? It's sorted alphabetically by default lol.

sexeriy237• 8 months ago

Isn't M$FT a $Trillion dollar company? They can afford it on their own bootstraps

bawolff2• 8 months ago

You dont get a billion dollar loan if you have no money. You are still expected to pay it back in the end.

DeathArrow2• 8 months ago

Maybe the loan is cheaper than using their own money.

yellowapple• 8 months ago

More critically: just because a company is worth $1 trillion doesn't mean it has anywhere close to $1 billion in cash at all, let alone able to be earmarked to a given project (at the presumed exclusion of other projects).

Granted, a project like this probably doesn't strictly need all $1 billion all at once, but I'd argue it's better to get whatever necessary funding upfront instead of risking having sunk a partial investment without being able to obtain the rest should the company's financial situation change.

DeathArrow2• 8 months ago

That’s cheaper than a brand-new nuclear power plant would cost, but it’s a hefty premium over wind, solar, and geothermal, according to a comparison of energy costs from Lazard.

Nuclear is more expensive because there are extensive regulations. "Green" energy not only does not face so many regulations but it benefits from incentives.

Also, when comparing nuclear with "green" energy, most studies don't take into account the costs of energy storage.

lm284693• 8 months ago

Studies also don't take into account that by subsidizing solar you're subsidizing an industry that's already subsidized by the Chinese gov, it's cool in the short term but we're making the same mistake we've been making for the last 50 years

Home grown nuclear programs will always be better than solar propped up by foreign entities.

roryirvine2• 8 months ago

That seems excessively defeatist.

Just because the USA squandered its early advantage in solar tech doesn't necessarily mean that it can never hope to regain a leading position.

Running away from the challenge now will all but guarantee defeat in the long term, so it's probably the wrong strategic decision to make.

bryanlarsen4• 8 months ago

Solar panels are a low margin commodity. Low margin commodity manufacturing does not add significant value to an economy, be that China or the US.

OTOH, cheap energy enabled by cheap solar panels is a huge benefit to any economy.

triceratops5• 8 months ago

The smart thing to do is take advantage of China's subsidies and import every solar panel they have on offer. It's like they're handing out free money.

They stop selling? No problem, the ones you have will work for the next 2 decades. You'll be lucky to build one new nuclear plant in that much time.

ViewTrick10028• 8 months ago

What costs on the nuclear side of the equation should we add for the backup when 50% of the nuclear fleet is unplanned offline?

Like happened in Sweden twice this year and in France at the peak of the energy crisis.

triceratops5• 8 months ago

As of 2025, even accounting for the costs of storage, solar and wind are cheaper than nuclear.

egorfine2• 8 months ago

So, even more AI shoved down our throats during the coming years?

dundercoder2• 8 months ago

This is very interesting to me because a plant this old might be cheaper to operate than a new plant, but might be like the space shuttle in that replacement parts aren’t readily available and thus expensive to custom manufacture.

If you were to step into the control room you’d see analog phones, tiny incandescent bulbs behind plastic covers… looks like a sci-fi set from the 60s.

The expensive part of a reactor isn’t really the reactor or tech itself, it’s the government regulation from the DOE and NRC.

I worked at Areva/Framatome/B&W and IIRC they still have the archival room where hundreds of 4 inch D ring binders held the original design docs that had to be submitted for approval.

SR2Z• 8 months ago

tiny incandescent bulbs behind plastic covers…

Not too disagree with the bulk of comment, but this sentence is not true. They're 90V neon indicator lamps, a technology that's really cool but also so inefficient that people rip it out and replace it.

Neat rabbit hole to do down.

dundercoder2• 8 months ago

Appreciate the correction.

DOE gives Microsoft partner $1B loan to restart Three Mile Island reactor

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