Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
The Trump administration announced Tuesday it will provide Constellation Energy with a $1 billion taxpayer-funded loan to restart the Crane Clean Energy Center nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania, previously known as Three Mile Island Unit 1, which sounds reassuring until you remember what Three Mile Island is famous for.
Lovely nuclear taxpayer-funded AI… (Constellation Energy/wikimedia)
The facility is scheduled to begin generating electricity again in 2027, which gives residents near the plant roughly two and a half years to come to terms with their proximity to a reactivated post-meltdown nuclear reactor or, alternatively, to move the hell away from there. Department of Energy officials characterized the restart as routine, noting that the reactor had operated safely for decades before closing, and that the other reactor on the same site only melted down just that one time.
The plant will exclusively power Microsoft’s expanding network of AI data centers in the region, which require approximately the electrical output of a small European nation to generate responses like “I’m sorry, I can’t help with that.” Constellation unveiled the restart plan in September 2024 through a power purchase agreement with Microsoft, marking the first time in history that artificial intelligence has required its own dedicated nuclear facility to function, though spokespeople for both companies insisted this is perfectly normal and not at all a sign that humanity has made poor choices.
The reactor sits on the same site as Three Mile Island Unit 2, which partially melted down in 1979 in what remains the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, a fact that the Department of Energy emphasized should be viewed as “valuable operational experience” rather than “a cautionary tale about hubris.” Unit 1 ceased operations in 2019 after failing to compete economically against cheap natural gas, joining roughly a dozen other reactors that closed in recent years because the free market decided nuclear power was too expensive, right up until tech companies needed it to train chatbots.
The $1 billion federal loan will cover the majority of the project’s estimated $1.6 billion cost, with Constellation providing the remainder and what officials described as a “guarantee” to protect taxpayer money, though the specific mechanisms of this guarantee were not detailed beyond assurances that everyone involved seemed confident. CEO Joe Dominguez had previously hinted at federal support, telling investors in September 2024 that Constellation would “take a look as we finance the project at loan guarantees and other things that will be available,” which is apparently how one casually discusses billion-dollar reactor restarts.
Beautiful, picturesque Three Mile Island, where nothing can go wrong for the sake of AI. (waltbilous/depositphotos)
When asked why Constellation was receiving the loan, Greg Beard, senior advisor to the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, explained that Constellation could have completed the project without federal assistance but that the loan would help make electricity cheaper for the 65 million consumers in the PJM Interconnection grid, which serves 13 states. The logic appears to be that giving a profitable corporation $1 billion will somehow reduce costs for residential customers, a theory that Beard presented with the confidence of someone who has never personally received an electricity bill.
“What’s important for the administration is to show support for affordable, reliable, secure energy in the U.S.,” Beard told reporters, carefully not mentioning that “affordable” in this context means “subsidized by taxpayers so Microsoft doesn’t have to pay market rates.” Energy Secretary Chris Wright confirmed last week that his department’s loan office would dedicate most of its remaining funds to supporting the nuclear industry, because apparently, wind and solar have had their turn.
The urgency stems from rapidly rising electricity prices across the PJM region as AI data centers multiply faster than available power supply, creating what industry experts call “a crisis” and what historians will eventually call “perhaps we should have thought this through.” Consumers in many PJM states are facing significant rate increases, though officials emphasized that restarting a reactor that’s been offline for six years to power language models should stabilize prices by approximately 2027, assuming nothing goes wrong, and what could go wrong?
“We want to bring as much net addition of dispatchable, reliable electricity onto the grid to stop these price rises,” Wright explained, describing nuclear power as “dispatchable” in the sense that you can dispatch it to generate electricity continuously for decades, as opposed to solar and wind, which rudely insist on depending on weather. The Crane Clean Energy Center had the capacity to power more than 800,000 homes when it closed in 2019, a capacity that will now be redirected exclusively to ensuring ChatGPT can generate mediocre poetry and summarize emails slightly faster than the free version.
The restart is subject to approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which will presumably evaluate whether bringing a 50-year-old reactor back online to power artificial intelligence represents sound public policy or the opening scene of a disaster film. Crane joins two other shuttered U.S. nuclear plants aiming to restart this decade: the Palisades plant in Michigan, which received a $1.5 billion federal loan, and the Duane Arnold plant in Iowa, which Google’s parent company Alphabet is restarting through a similar arrangement, suggesting that tech giants have discovered that asking the government to subsidize their infrastructure is significantly cheaper than paying for it themselves.
Not so smug now, are you, wind turbines… (Erik Wilde/wikimedia)
President Trump signed four executive orders in May aimed at significantly expanding nuclear capacity, part of a broader energy strategy that Department officials described as “all-of-the-above” but which appears to heavily favor whichever energy source currently requires the most taxpayer assistance.
When asked whether additional reactor restarts would receive federal loans, Beard confirmed that Trump’s executive orders direct the Energy Department to “prioritize the restart of nuclear reactors,” meaning any reactor that stopped operating because it couldn’t turn a profit may soon be eligible for public funding to ensure tech companies can afford their electricity bills. The arrangement has been praised by industry groups that represent nuclear operators and tech companies, criticized by consumer advocates who noted that residential customers aren’t receiving billion-dollar loans to lower their utility bills, and observed with quiet concern by residents living within the evacuation zone, who were not consulted but who presumably have strong opinions.
Constellation is the largest operator of nuclear plants in the U.S., a position that apparently comes with the ability to request ten-figure loans when convenient. Officials insisted Tuesday that the restart represents a win for consumers, the environment, and American energy independence, though they were less specific about what exactly consumers are winning beyond the opportunity to subsidize Microsoft’s operating costs while their own electricity bills increase. The reactor is scheduled to begin operations in 2027, at which point we’ll discover whether American energy policy in the 2020s was visionary leadership or just expensive performance art.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
