Three Mile Island's revival gets its big transformer

A shut-down nuclear plant is coming back because of AI's power needs. Workers delivered a massive main power transformer to the former Three Mile Island plant Monday. It's one of the last big pieces needed for the restart. Constellation, the plant's owner, is racing to bring the reactor back online. It now goes by a new name: the Crane Clean Energy Center. The customer waiting for the power is Microsoft.

Microsoft signed a 20-year deal to buy the plant's electricity, mostly to feed its own AI data centers. That deal is why a reactor shut down in 2019 for economic reasons is coming back at all. AI's hunger for power made an old, uneconomical plant worth reviving. Power plants can't run without a working transformer. It's the last link between the reactor and the grid. Constellation says it's still on track for a 2027 restart.

Keep reading — what to watch

Will the rest of the restart go as smoothly as the transformer delivery? Restarting a reactor that's sat idle for years means testing systems that haven't run in a long time. One clean delivery is a good sign. It isn't a guarantee the 2027 date holds.