The cooling towers along the Susquehanna River in central Pennsylvania have stood idle since September 2019. That could change under a $1 billion federal loan finalized in early 2025 to restart the reactor now called the Christopher M. Crane Clean Energy Center, the former Three Mile Island Unit 1. If the Nuclear Regulatory Commission grants approval, owner Constellation Energy expects the 835-megawatt plant to deliver roughly 759 megawatts of carbon-free electricity to the grid, enough to supply an estimated 550,000 homes across the region.
The project marks the first time the U.S. Department of Energy has closed a loan of this size to bring a shuttered commercial nuclear reactor back to life. It is also a high-stakes bet: taxpayer-backed money is already committed, but the plant cannot generate a single watt until federal regulators finish a safety review that has no published timeline.
Why this plant, and why now
Constellation did not shut down Unit 1 because of safety problems. The reactor held a valid operating license when the company retired it in 2019, a casualty of rock-bottom wholesale power prices driven by cheap natural gas and growing renewable capacity. At the time, several merchant nuclear plants across the Northeast and Midwest faced the same economic squeeze.
What changed is demand. The mid-Atlantic grid managed by PJM Interconnection is projecting sharp load growth over the next decade, driven in large part by data center construction in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and neighboring states. Constellation has also signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Microsoft, giving the restart a committed buyer for a significant share of its output. That commercial anchor, combined with federal financing, shifts the economics in ways that were not available six years ago.
Supporters of the deal argue that reviving an existing plant is faster and cheaper than building a new reactor from scratch. The Crane site already has transmission connections, a trained workforce pipeline in the region, and decades of operating history. The DOE’s decision to back the project signals that Washington views mothballed nuclear plants as recoverable clean-energy assets, not just facilities on a one-way path to demolition.
What the federal loan covers
The DOE’s Loan Programs Office, now operating under the banner of the Office of Energy Dominance Financing, closed the $1.0 billion loan to partially finance the restart. Federal documents confirm the loan amount, the borrower, and the reactor’s identity, but they do not detail the full capital structure. Constellation’s equity contribution and any additional private financing have not been disclosed in public filings as of May 2026.
Under standard DOE procedures, the project must comply with environmental review requirements, credit risk assessments, and ongoing performance monitoring. In practice, that means Constellation will face periodic federal reporting obligations even after any restart is approved.
The headline capacity figure of 759 megawatts reflects expected net output, the electricity actually delivered to the grid after subtracting the plant’s own internal power consumption. The DOE’s official project page lists gross capacity at 835 megawatts. The “550,000 homes” estimate is derived from standard industry formulas that divide net output by average household electricity use. It is a reasonable approximation, but it is not a figure that appears in DOE or NRC filings, and actual output will depend on how consistently the plant runs once restarted.
The NRC review stands between the loan and the lights
The single largest unknown is regulatory. The NRC’s reactor listing confirms the facility’s shutdown and decommissioning status. Before any restart, the commission requires Constellation to restore the plant’s licensing basis to operational status, demonstrate that all safety-critical components are ready for service, and complete whatever upgrades the NRC mandates.
None of these steps has a published schedule. The NRC has not issued a formal timeline for reviewing Constellation’s application, and the company has not publicly released detailed engineering assessments of the reactor’s current condition. That gap matters because the $1 billion loan is already closed, meaning taxpayer-backed capital is committed before the plant has cleared its most significant hurdle.
If inspections reveal equipment degradation that requires costly replacement, or if the licensing review stretches over several years, the project’s budget and schedule could shift substantially. The NRC operates under a safety mandate that does not weigh project economics or energy policy goals, a tension that will sharpen if safety findings collide with cost or schedule pressures.
How Crane compares to Palisades
The Crane project is not the only nuclear restart underway. In Michigan, Holtec International is pursuing the revival of the Palisades Nuclear Plant with its own conditional DOE loan commitment. Palisades is further along in the NRC review process, making it a useful benchmark. If Palisades clears regulatory hurdles smoothly, it could build confidence that aging reactors can be safely returned to service. If it encounters significant technical or licensing obstacles, those lessons will ripple directly into the Crane timeline.
Together, the two projects are testing whether nuclear restarts can become a repeatable strategy for meeting rising electricity demand with zero-carbon generation, or whether each shuttered plant presents unique engineering and regulatory challenges that make revival impractical at scale.
What nearby communities are watching for
Residents and ratepayers in Londonderry Township and surrounding Dauphin County face no immediate changes. No electricity from the Crane Clean Energy Center will reach the grid until the NRC completes its review and Constellation finishes physical upgrades.
A successful restart could support hundreds of well-paying jobs and stabilize tax revenues for nearby municipalities, but neither the DOE nor Constellation has published binding employment commitments. Community groups near the site have historically raised concerns about nuclear operations in the area, and questions about local traffic, water use from the Susquehanna, and emergency preparedness plans are likely to surface as permitting advances. Environmental review status under the National Environmental Policy Act has not been clarified in available DOE documentation, leaving open the possibility of legal challenges that could introduce further delays.
For now, the Crane project is a funded plan, not an operational power plant. The next concrete milestone to watch is the NRC’s formal safety evaluation. Until the commission issues a restart order, the cooling towers along the river will remain quiet, and the question of whether this billion-dollar investment delivers on its promise will remain unanswered.
More from Morning Overview
*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
