By Adriano Marchese
Canadian uranium producers shares got a boost Friday morning after Constellation Energy signed a deal to restart Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant to help power Microsoft's growing artificial intelligence ambitions.
Energy Fuels, Denison Mines, NexGen Energy and Cameco are among the top Canadian companies gaining ground in the session.
Constellation Energy and Microsoft signed a 20-year power purchase agreement which sets in motion the launch of the Crane Clean Energy Center and the restart of the Three Mile Island Unit 1, which the company expects will add more than 800 megawatts of carbon-free electricity to the grid.
The undamaged Unit 1 reactor is situated next to Unit 2, which was shut down after a partial core meltdown in 1979. The incident led to a heightened awareness of potential safety problems around nuclear power plants and contributed to a loss of enthusiasm for the industry that lasted decades.
With the new deal, Constellation expects to renew its license that will extend plant operations to at least 2054.
This is the second good news for Canadian uranium producers that has driven up their stocks. In late August, they received a jolt when the world's biggest producer of uranium, Kazatomprom, which is based in Kazakhstan, cut its production target for the next year due to prolonged construction woes.
Nuclear energy emerged as a solution to both energy security concerns and decarbonization ambitions as well as to counter tight supply of other energy sources, and is now seen as another way to power the next generation of AI initiatives such as Microsoft's.
Write to Adriano Marchese at adriano.marchese@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 20, 2024 10:06 ET (14:06 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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