The Trump administration said it is planning to provide a $1 billion loan to help bring a portion of Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant back online.

The New York Times reports that the loan will go to Constellation Energy, which is working with Microsoft to restore and restart Three Mile Island's Unit 1 reactor. The project is expected to provide enough electricity to power 800,000 homes, and will allow Microsoft to purchase a portion of the plant's output to power the company's artificial intelligence data centers. The Trump administration's loan would cover more than half of the initiative's $1.6 billion estimated price tag, although past nuclear power projects in the U.S. have frequently exceeded their original budgets.

Neither Constellation nor the Energy Department provided details of the loan or its terms.

Three Mile Island was shut down in 1979, after its Unit 2 reactor partially melted down and released a small amount of radioactive material into the surrounding air. The Guardian reported at the time that authorities stressed that the levels of radiation beyond the power station were no more than the equivalent of having a dental X-ray, but debate continues about increased cancer risk and the strain on mental health caused to the surrounding populace. The meltdown is considered the worst nuclear power plant accident in U.S. history, and is widely blamed for the ensuing decades-long decline in nuclear power advancements in the U.S.

Although Unit 1 is directly adjacent to the Unit 2 reactor, Constellation claims that the restarted reactor will be a "fully independent facility," and that it was not impacted by the 1979 meltdown. However, bringing Unit 1 back online will still require "significant investments" to restore its turbine, generator, and main power transformer, as well as its cooling and control systems, the company noted.