Microsoft is continuing to ramp up their plans for more data centres. And now they are making another bold new bet to do it: restarting a historic American nuclear power plant.

‍What’s happening:‍

• Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has announced their plans to restart iconic nuclear power plant Three Mile Island located in Pennsylvania through a new large scale power purchase agreement
  
• The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant is owned and operated by energy giant Constellation Energy (NASDAQ: CEG)
  

Market reaction:‍

• Constellation Energy saw their share price spike +22% on the announcement
  

Why it matters:‍

• The new power purchase agreement from Microsoft is the largest deal ever received by Constellation Energy
  
• The restarting of Three Mile Island is an enormous moment of validation for the potential of nuclear energy to provide low carbon power to data centres and could change the paradigm of how artificial intelligence cloud computing can leverage renewable energy sources
  

Going deeper:‍

• Microsoft and BlackRock (NYSE: BLK) also recently announced a new mega fund that will look to build out new data centre infrastructure globally, with the help of Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA)
  
• Powering new data centres has become an important problem to solve and has led OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman to recently back renewable energy startup Exowatt who has developed an innovative modular technology to leverage solar energy for data centre power consumption
  

By the numbers:‍

• Constellation Energy expects that restarting nuclear power generation at the Three Mile Island facility will cost about $1.6B USD
  
• Once operational, Three Mile Island could produce 837 megawatts of energy which is enough electricity to power approximately 800,000 houses
  
• Constellation Energy has a current market capitalization of $79B USD
  

The fine print:‍

• The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant had a devastating partial meltdown more than four decades ago and the new deal between Microsoft and Constellation Energy will ultimately still require federal, state and local policy approvals

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