Washington DC - Three Mile Island, the site of America's worst nuclear accident, will restart operations to provide power to Microsoft, electricity company Constellation Energy announced Friday.

Microsoft will use the capability to deliver its expanding AI and cloud services, which are putting pressure on local electricity providers as tech giants build more power-hungry data centers.

The 20-year agreement involves restarting Unit 1, which "operated at industry-leading levels of safety and reliability for decades before being shut down for economic reasons exactly five years ago," Constellation said in a statement.

Unit 1 was not involved in the 1979 partial nuclear meltdown at the Pennsylvania site.

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Before its premature retirement in 2019, the plant could power over 800,000 average homes.

Microsoft will use this energy to support power grids in the mid-Atlantic states around Washington DC, a region considered an internet crossroads.

Bobby Hollis, Microsoft's vice president of energy, said that Three Mile Island's nuclear energy will bolster a power grid covering 13 states.

This area faces severe strain from data centers' massive energy consumption, raising concerns about grid stability as AI demands increase.

Tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are rapidly expanding their data center capabilities to meet the AI revolution's computing needs while also scouring the globe for sources of electricity.

Hollis said the project was part of a "multi-technology approach" to sourcing power – which also includes wind and solar energy – and "an essential pathway to achieving our goal of becoming carbon negative by 2030."

Microsoft earlier this year signed a deal with Canada's Brookfield Asset Management to develop over 10.5 gigawatts of new wind and solar farms, marking one of the largest corporate purchases of renewable energy to date.

Constellation Energy expects the Three Mile Island reactor to go back online in 2028.

Despite the skeptical view of nuclear power in pop culture – a perception fueled by cartoonishly inept nuclear power employee Homer Simpson – industry professionals consider nuclear power to be a more consistent source of power than solar and wind.

Many tech companies are betting on nuclear energy's rapid development to meet AI's electricity demands.