The boundless optimism that accompanied the AI and data centre-induced nuclear energy renaissance in the US seems to have subsided.
That much became clear when Constellation Energy's chief executive Joe Dominguez spoke last week during a session at CERAWeek in Houston, Texas, viewed as one of the most influential US energy conferences.
He was asked about the company's goal to bring a decommissioned nuclear plant back online.
Mr Dominguez said that everything seemed to be going according to plan in terms of ticking the boxes required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in making sure the plant was safe, but then he shared some bad news.
“When it comes to the grid's ability to interconnect it as a capacity resource – that's moving a little slower than expected,” he said, proceeding to liken the process to Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, which talks about the best of times and the worst of times.
Another Constellation Energy official told Reuters that according to PJM Interconnection, a corporation that transmits electricity throughout much of the US, efforts to reconnect the plant to the grid might not be possible until 2031 because of the need for transmission upgrades.
Regardless, adding to the scrutiny faced by the restart efforts is the fact that the reactor in question is Three Mile Island Unit 1 (TMI 1).
In 2024, Constellation, owner and operator of TMI 1 in Pennsylvania, shut down since 2019, announced plans to restart the plant after reaching a power purchase agreement with Microsoft.
The deal was motivated largely by Microsoft's need to power data centres for AI.
Constellation renamed TMI 1 as the Crane Clean Energy Centre, and for good reason. Three Mile Island's Unit 2 reactor, which is adjacent to unit 1 in Middletown, was the site of one of the largest nuclear accidents in US history.
In late March 1979, the core of the plant was partially exposed, prompting a temporary evacuation of the nearby area and a lengthy clean-up around Middletown.
TMI 1, however, kept operating in the subsequent decades, until it was no longer financially feasible.
Initially after announcing its deal with Microsoft to bring TMI 1 back online, Constellation said it expected the reactor to be operational as soon as 2027.
Mr Dominguez's recent comments, coupled with the Reuters report, cast doubt on that date, though Constellation has since said the 2027 goal remains in sight.
Critics of nuclear energy and restarting TMI 1 are not convinced.
“This is a substantive development that cast doubt on TMI restarting in the 2020s,” said Eric Epstein, director of Three Mile Island Alert, a grass roots safe energy organisation founded in 1977.
Mr Epstein also told The National that the recent admission from Constellation Energy's chief executive confirms what Neil Chatterjee, who served on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during Mr Trump's first term, recently wrote for a comment piece in The Hill.
“It will never work,” Mr Chatterjee wrote earlier this year. “A fully shutdown nuclear plant has never been restarted in America for good reason: there are too many regulatory, material and logistical hurdles to overcome.”
Mr Chatterjee said that although tempting to think otherwise, the reactor vessel inside TMI1 “could be brittle and fatigued” and that restarting a nuclear reactor isn't the same as simply switching it back on “like a light bulb”.
Those concerns raised by Mr Chatterjee, hardly considered to be a leader in the anti-nuclear energy movement, echo worries by Mr Epstein and Three Mile Island Alert.
Also added to the increased criticisms to what some have called a nuclear energy renaissance, are allegations about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Non-profit news organisation ProPublica, a winner of several Pulitzer Prizes and Peabody awards, recently accused the White House of essentially turning the NRC into a political arm of President Donald Trump's ambitions.
“A ProPublica analysis of staffing data from the NRC and the Office of Personnel Management shows a rush to the exits: Over 400 people have left the agency since Trump took office,” one paragraph of the lengthy story read, also alleging that the White House unfairly fired NRC commissioner Christopher Hanson after he pushed to maintain the NRC's independence.
Mr Epstein, who previously told The National about his concerns about the NRC's integrity under the shadow of the Trump White House, said the latest report ramped up his worries.
“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been blindsided and gutted by the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge),” he alleged.
“Leadership is composed of an ensemble cast of inexperienced political operatives with minimal nuclear credentials.”
Scott Burnell, a public affairs official with the NRC told The National that the NRC has continued to appoint high-quality senior leaders over the past few months "and has an unprecedented track record of successes over the past year."
Mr Burnell also pointed to recent statements made by NRC Chairman Ho Nieh, who insisted that safety remains the commission's top priority.
"The NRC is not a rubber stamp," that statement read in part. "Our independence remains firm and enduring."
TMI 1 is not the only nuclear reactors being restarted.
On Monday, Holtec, owner of the shuttered Palisades nuclear reactor in Michigan, took a small victory lap after achieving a “key milestone” to restarting.
Holtec has previously said that it hoped to restart Palisades by 2026.
As for TMI 1, Mr Dominguez told attendees at CERAWeek attendees that in his view, “all of the inspections have revealed that the equipment was for a large measure, in as good a condition as we could have ever hoped for.”
