A Constellation executive told an energy industry conference Thursday his firm still does not have a green light to send power from a reopened Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear power station to the grid next year.
In fact, as a Reuters correspondent reported Thursday, Constellation’s senior vice president and chief external affairs officer David Dardis said PJM Interconnection’s latest analysis suggests the way may not be clear for Constellation’s station near Middletown, now renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center, until 2031.
PJM is the regional transmission organizer for 13 states in the mid-Atlantic region, including Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C.
But Constellation officials were quick to reframe Dardis’s comment Thursday night, asserting the PJM date he cited is based on preliminary assessments, and a summer 2027 restart for the plant remains the goal and expectation.
“The Crane restart remains on track for the second half of 2027, and we continue to expect to be able to deliver energy to the grid at that time,” the company said in a statement provided to PennLive, when asked about the report out of the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston.
“The 2031 date relates to the certainty of full deliverability of its capacity injection rights for the facility and is based on the first phase of PJM’s three‑part study process. These initial study results are preliminary, and Constellation is actively engaged with both PJM and our utility partners to evaluate a range of potential options to move the schedule forward,” the company’s statement concluded.
Translation?
“This is going to get resolved,” a Constellation spokesman said Thursday night.
The ability of the regional grid to handle the projected 835 megawatts coming from the old TMI Unit 1 station has always been one of the major boxes to check for the restart.
What hadn’t been made public until now was that PJM currently has the plant penciled in for 2031.
According to the Reuters report, Dardis told the CERAWeek conference that in initial feedback, PJM said it would take that long to complete some of the transmission upgrades needed for the restarted plant to connect to the grid.
Even PJM acknowledged some fluidity to that date Thursday night, however.
“PJM’s analysis of the transmission upgrades needed to reintroduce the Crane Clean Energy Center remains preliminary. The study will go through additional iterations before final agreements are issued, expected by the end of 2026,” spokesman Jeff Shields said.
Shields declined to discuss the specific interconnection issues facing the Crane plant Thursday night.
Constellation announced in September 2024 that it wants to reopen the old TMI Unit One reactor, which the company’s corporate forefathers shuttered in 2019 for economic reasons.
At that time, then-owner Exelon said its operational costs meant the nuclear plant’s power could no longer compete with cheap natural gas then flooding the energy market.
A technology-driven sea change in U.S. energy demand has changed that paradigm.
In TMI’s case, Microsoft has agreed to buy the equivalent of all the wattage produced by the restarted nuclear plant for at least 20 years, guaranteeing Constellation’s plant can operate profitably over the long term.
Three Mile Island can’t just flick a switch and be done with it, PJM’s Shields explained, because of significant change in the energy grid’s loads since 2019.
“PJM recognizes the urgency of bringing new generation online as quickly as possible. We expect to clear up to 30 gigawatts of projects for interconnection this year, including Crane,” Shields said.
“As the analysis progresses and reflects changes across the queue, timelines may adjust.”
Constellation is also in discussions with transmission owners to accelerate the timeline, the Reuters report quoted Dardis as saying.
It was not immediately clear Thursday night how Constellation’s Microsoft deal would be affected if the Dauphin County plant’s restart is delayed by four years.
Aside from the transmission issues, the restart still needs licensing approvals from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
At a public meeting in Middletown last month, NRC officials called 2026 a major year for their work.
With all of Constellation’s major licensing amendment applications now in, the regulators said it’s in the next 12 months that inspectors will perform most of the plan and physical plant inspections to make sure the mothballed reactor is ready to operate safely.
On-site inspections have been limited so far, they said, in part because Constellation’s restoration efforts hadn’t gotten far enough along to make them worthwhile.
Three Mile Island Unit 1 is one of three closed commercial nuclear power stations now being advanced for restarts. To this point, that had not happened in the United States.
Source: Pennlive