Three Mile Island will restart to power AI by 2027

Three Mile Island is coming back online. The nuclear power station, infamous for the 1979 nuclear disaster, will restart by 2027 to power the rapidly growing fleet of chatbots, large language models, and other artificial intelligence applications.

Why nuclear energy?

The demand for electricity from AI applications is growing exponentially. A single ChatGPT query consumes approximately 10 times more electricity than a traditional Google search. When you're talking about millions of requests per day from users worldwide, that translates to tens and hundreds of megawatts of electrical power.

Solar panels and wind turbines cannot provide such volumes of power within reasonable timeframes and with the required reliability. Nuclear energy offers a solution that alternatives cannot: enormous constant power on minimal land area, operating 24/7 regardless of weather. A single 1-gigawatt nuclear power station can power an entire continent of computing power.

Three Mile Island is strategically well-located. It sits in Pennsylvania, not far from the U.S.

East Coast, where the major server farms and data centers of technology companies are concentrated. Its startup will immediately enable new computing capacity without long, costly transmission line construction across hundreds of kilometers.

• One LLM query consumes 10-15 watt-hours of electricity
• Global demand for server capacity is growing at 25% per year
• Renewable energy sources cannot scale fast enough
• Large-scale battery storage remains an expensive and inefficient technology
• Nuclear energy provides carbon-neutral and sustainable power

From Catastrophe to Rebirth

Three Mile Island's story began with one of the most serious accidents in the history of civil nuclear energy. In 1979, a series of technical failures and operator errors led to a partial meltdown of the reactor. The accident became a turning point in public perception of nuclear energy in the West, particularly in the United States.

The facility was shut down for decades, becoming a symbol of danger and chaos. But times are changing. In 2019, investors returned to the idea of restarting the facility.

It has been completely modernized: key systems have been replaced, all safety systems have been rebuilt from scratch, and modern monitoring and control equipment has been installed. U.S.

regulatory bodies have issued approval for restoration.

This is not simply a return to the old.

This is an entirely new facility in an old building — with modern monitoring, safety, and automation systems.

Global Shift in Nuclear Energy

Three Mile Island is not an isolated case of nuclear energy reassessment. Around the world, major technology companies have begun investing in nuclear energy development projects. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are purchasing capacity from existing nuclear plants and investing in the development of small modular reactors (SMRs).

Politically, the United States is experiencing a reassessment of nuclear energy. Where it was once viewed as a source of uncontrollable risk, it is now being considered a critical technology for combating climate change and ensuring energy security for the AI revolution. The facility will restart by June 2027 at full capacity of approximately 1 gigawatt.

This is equivalent to powering several million homes or a single large data center with millions of servers.

What This Means

Three Mile Island is a symbol of an era of technological risk reassessment. The place where humanity grew fearful of nuclear energy in 1979 is now becoming its hero in the battle against AI's energy hunger. This story demonstrates that fear of a technology rooted in history can give way to recognition of its necessity. If nuclear energy can truly scale and power growing AI data centers without hydrocarbons — the world of electricity and energy infrastructure will fundamentally change in the coming decade.