Correction — October 3, 2026: The earlier headline incorrectly implied the reactor had reopened. We have updated the status, added dated primary sources and removed unsupported power-price and GPU-economics figures. The original 2024 announcement targeted 2028; Constellation’s August 2026 update targets 2027.
Constellation’s proposed restart of Three Mile Island Unit 1 is backed by a 20-year power purchase agreement with Microsoft. The September 20, 2024 announcement described approximately 835MW of capacity and initially targeted 2028. In its August 6, 2026 update, Constellation said it was moving toward a 2027 restart. That is a plan, not evidence that the reactor has reopened.
Unit 1 and Unit 2 are separate facilities
Constellation’s Crane Clean Energy Center page identifies Unit 1 as the facility retired for economic reasons in 2019. Unit 2, affected by the 1979 accident, is a separate facility being decommissioned by another owner. The restart plan concerns Unit 1, renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center.
That distinction prevents a misleading account in which a damaged reactor is portrayed as being turned back on for AI. The project still needs restoration work and regulatory approval, but its engineering and operating history must be assessed using the correct unit.
Regulatory milestones are progress, not completion
The August update reports a FERC waiver allowing transfer of capacity interconnection rights and an NRC fuel-license amendment. These are dated milestones. They should not be described as a completed restart or as proof that every remaining operational approval has been granted.
For a customer assessing power availability, a forecast date needs to be separated from an accepted commissioning date. The useful evidence would include the completed restart authorisations, operating status and actual delivery under the agreement. A power contract and a functioning generating unit solve different parts of the same supply problem.
Do not turn 835MW into a precise GPU count
If 835MW were continuously delivered for 8,760 hours, annual energy would be 7,314,600MWh, or 7.3146TWh. An illustrative 90% operating factor gives 6.58314TWh. Neither figure is an EyesTech production forecast, and neither establishes the energy consumed by a specific Microsoft workload.
A GPU estimate would additionally need chip and server power, networking, cooling, conversion losses, site allocation and operating schedules. A contract’s capacity cannot provide those values. The earlier dollar-per-megawatt-hour and accelerator-cost figures were not substantiated by the reviewed sources and have been removed.
The publicly supported story is a commercial agreement enabling a planned nuclear restart, with a company target of 2027. It is meaningful progress toward additional supply, while operational status remains a fact to verify separately. The article’s original URL remains in place so existing references reach the corrected account.
