Microsoft’s September 2024 announcement that it would restart the Three Mile Island nuclear facility—site of America’s worst nuclear accident—marked a turning point. The twenty-year power purchase agreement secured dedicated electricity supply for Microsoft’s data centers at a scale that the existing grid could not provide. The Department of Energy approved a one billion dollar loan guarantee in November 2025 to accelerate the restart, now targeting 2027 operation.

but not from a “we’re gonna have the three mile island incident part deux” view. People’s energy bills are through the roof, everything is pointing towards needing reduced energy usage, and what’s the government doing about it? Giving Microsoft a loan to get their own personal nuclear reactor so Copilot can write a stilted response email for the useless middle managers of the world.