A media tour was held by Constellation at the Crane Clean Energy Center, formerly known as Three Mile Island, so media could visit the turbine building and the control center where progress toward the restart of the nuclear reactor is taking place after the facility closed in 2019 on Wednesday, June 25, 2025. Known as draft cooling towers, Unit 1, left, is being relaunched and will be operational by 2028, Unit 2 closed after a partial meltdown in March of 1979. The towers are 372 feet tall.
Suzette Wenger / LNP | LancasterOnline
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An inside look at reopening Three Mile Island’s nuclear plant expected in 2027
By Jaxon White/LNP | LancasterOnline
Suzette Wenger / LNP | LancasterOnline
A media tour was held by Constellation at the Crane Clean Energy Center, formerly known as Three Mile Island, so media could visit the turbine building and the control center where progress toward the restart of the nuclear reactor is taking place after the facility closed in 2019 on Wednesday, June 25, 2025. Known as draft cooling towers, Unit 1, left, is being relaunched and will be operational by 2028, Unit 2 closed after a partial meltdown in March of 1979. The towers are 372 feet tall.
Hundreds of analog switches, dials and levers covered a soft green panel in the control room of the renamed Unit 1 nuclear reactor on Three Mile Island on Wednesday.
In the center of the panels at the front of the room were two bright red buttons placed in a vertical line. The bottom button was labeled “REACTOR TRIP.” The top button’s label read, “DSS TRIP.”
Those are the kill switch and back-up kill switch for Unit 1, said Craig Smith, a licensed reactor operator at Unit 1, while guiding reporters through the facility Wednesday morning.
By pressing one of the buttons, Smith explained, the control room operator could shut down the reactor’s chain reaction process if an emergency occurs when the facility reopens in a few years.
That reopening — among the first instances nationwide of a nuclear reactor restarting after it closed — is on track for as early as 2027, a year earlier than the initial plan when the project was announced last year, according to Constellation Energy Corporation, owners of the newly rebranded Crane Clean Energy Center.
Smith, a 20-year plant employee, told reporters on the tour that the panels look nearly identical to how they did when Constellation closed Unit 1 in 2019. Once the company restarts the facility, he said it may digitize many of the controls.
The current analog controls, though originally built in the 1970s, were maintained by Constellation at “peak performance,” Smith said.
After the tour, government officials, reporters and more than 400 employees outside the facility gathered to mark the progress of the reopening. Constellation President and CEO Joe Dominguez said his company “made a mistake” in shutting down Unit 1 nearly six years ago.
Suzette Wenger / LNP | LancasterOnline
Two workers as viewed during a media tour held by Constellation at the Crane Clean Energy Center, formerly known as Three Mile Island, where media could visit the turbine building where progress toward the restart of the nuclear reactor is taking place after the facility closed in 2019 on Wednesday, June 25, 2025. The turbine is a component in making electricity. A large, multi-stage machine converts energy of high-pressure steam into rotational mechanical energy. This energy is used to drive an electrical generator that produces electricity. Constellation announced the signing of a 20-year power purchase agreement with Microsoft that will pave the way for the launch of CCEC and the restart of TMI Unit 1, which operated for decades before shutting down five years ago.
“But we’re not here to dwell on that mistake,” Dominguez said. “We’re here to look to the future.”
Once it opens, Constellation expects the Crane Clean Energy Center to produce about 835 megawatts annually — enough energy to power about 800,000 homes.
Microsoft agreed to purchase that energy to match the power it uses at one of its data centers as part of a 20-year agreement, which the company says is part of its goal to become carbon negative.
During his comments, Bobby Hollis, vice president of energy at Microsoft, thanked Gov. Josh Shapiro for the role the first-term Democrat has played in relaunching the reactor. Recently, Shapiro sent a letter to grid operator PJM to help obtain the needed approvals to fast-track the facility’s connection to the electrical grid.
Shapiro said onstage, speaking before Hollis, that the reopening of Three Mile Island will contribute to his goal of being an “all of the above energy governor.”
“By creating more energy, we will create more opportunities for all Pennsylvanians,” Shapiro said.
On March 28, 1979, Three Mile Island’s Unit 2 was the site of the worst commercial nuclear power incident in U.S. history, sparking a national debate over the technology. Unit 2 is going through the process of being decommissioned by its owner, Energy Solutions.
Constellation employees were quick to note Wednesday that they are not affiliated with the decommissioning of Unit 2.
“I really don’t want to discuss Unit 2,” Smith told a reporter who asked about the status of the shutdown.
Constellation officials said the meltdown decades ago did not impact Unit 1’s long-term functioning, and the company ceased operation at Unit 1 in September 2019 for economic reasons.
Constellation purchased Unit 1 in 1999 and, last month, obtained permission from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to rename the facility Crane Clean Energy Center in honor of Christopher Crane, former CEO of Constellation’s parent company, Exelon.
Over 20 years, the restart of the reactor will create about 3,400 direct or indirect jobs and generate more than $3.6 billion in local, state and federal tax revenue, according to a 2024 Brattle Group study cited by Constellation.
The Crane Clean Energy Center recently passed inspections of its diesel, steam and main generators, as well as its turbines, according to Constellation officials. As of Wednesday, officials said, the facility was staffed at roughly 64% with more than 400 full-time employees
Some of those employees worked at the plant before it shut down. Others are being trained across the street at a simulation of the control deck that matches the one a group of reporters observed Wednesday.
