The AI race has increasingly become an electricity race, as companies sprint to build the power infrastructure necessary to power data centers. Joe Dominguez, president and CEO of Constellation Energy, is betting that nuclear energy will be one of the most important sources of that power.
To do that, Constellation has signed a series of agreements with hyperscalers to provide long-term nuclear power to their data centers. No such deal has received more attention than Constellation’s partnership with Microsoft to restart a reactor at Three-Mile Island nuclear facility. The deal will provide Microsoft carbon-free power for the next 20 years. (The facility, renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center, is best known for the infamous 1979 meltdown, though it occurred at a different reactor).
The project is part and parcel of a broader transformation Dominguez has helped drive. For decades, nuclear plants struggled to compete with cheap natural gas and renewable energy. Now the relentless, around-the-clock electricity needs of AI have made existing reactors enormously valuable assets.