SEP 13 – SEP 20, 2026 · 5 ITEMS
Crane clears its environmental review
The NRC issued its final Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact this week for the Christopher M. Crane Clean Energy Center, formerly Three Mile Island Unit 1 (Docket 50-289). No full environmental impact statement. Staff concluded the effects of restoring the plant and resuming operation “would not be significant” across every resource area it reviewed.
This closes the loop on June’s draft EA and the comment period we covered on July 5. What remains is the license. The NRC still has to approve moving Crane from decommissioning status back to an operating facility, which includes undoing the permanent shutdown certifications Constellation filed when the unit closed. Trade coverage puts that licensing decision around May 2027, with restart in 2027. (Those schedule figures come from outside Dynawatt’s usual source set. The EA itself gives no restart date.)
The reason Crane belongs in this brief is on page one of the EA. Constellation signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Microsoft in September 2024 to supply the plant’s output to Microsoft data centers in PJM. So: 835 MW, a named buyer, and an interconnection path already sorted (FERC approved moving 760 MW of capacity interconnection rights from Eddystone Units 3 and 4 onto the unit in June). Most projects that cross this wire have one of those three things. Crane has all of them.
Three filings for reactors that don’t exist yet
The other nuclear items are real milestones. None of them puts power on a grid this decade.
Long Mott. The ACRS New Reactors Subcommittee took up the construction permit application for Dow and X-energy’s Xe-100 plant on September 15. This is the same review we flagged August 23, still at subcommittee. A full-committee letter comes next, and the staff’s safety evaluation can’t close without it. The digest again leaves the state blank. It’s Seadrift, Calhoun County, Texas, and the customer is the Dow chemical complex next door.
Last Energy. The NRC published its plan for a pre-application readiness assessment of Last Energy’s Caldwell County, Texas, site, where the company wants to build its PWR-20 design. The assessment runs from September into late October. Last Energy says it will file part one of a two-part Limited Work Authorization application by October 20. An LWA lets site preparation start before a construction permit is issued, which is the same move Holtec made at Palisades with its excavation exemption (September 7). Dirt work runs in parallel with licensing, and the months saved all sit at the front of the schedule.
There’s some irony here. In late 2024 Last Energy joined Texas and Utah in suing the NRC, arguing the agency’s framework is overburdensome for small reactors. Now it’s coming in through the NRC’s front door like everyone else. (Lawsuit context is outside our usual source set.)
Eielson. On September 16 the NRC agreed to serve as a cooperating agency on the Department of the Air Force’s environmental assessment for preconstruction activities on a microreactor at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. The letter names no vendor and no capacity. (The Air Force picked Oklo for Eielson in 2023; that’s outside the wire.) A base microreactor serves a base, not a grid. It matters here as a template: a federal agency running its own NEPA review with the NRC riding along is one model for behind-the-meter reactors at large loads.
Put the week together and September 7’s argument sharpens. Permitting is the fast part, and the fastest firm megawatts of all come from a reactor that already has a containment building, a transmission connection and a trained site. Crane is on track for 2027. Long Mott, Caldwell County and Eielson are 2030s projects at best.
One hybrid plant, mislabeled
A 400 MW solar-plus-storage hybrid in Yoakum County, Texas, reached commercial operation in SPP’s queue (GEN-2021-090). The digest describes it as “firm dispatchable solar capacity in an ISO-NE region.” Both halves are wrong. Yoakum County is in SPP, as the queue number says. And a hybrid plant is only as firm as its battery duration, which the queue record doesn’t give. It’s useful capacity for evening peaks in West Texas. It isn’t a substitute for 835 MW running around the clock.
The record names no owner or offtaker. For the record, this is the fifth consecutive issue in which our own enrichment has put something in the wrong place.
Still no demand side
For the third issue running, the wire carried no large-load item. ERCOT’s Large Load Working Group produced nothing, and neither did any queue. The only demand signal this week is Crane’s Microsoft contract, which is two years old. Read this brief’s supply-side tilt as a gap in our sources, not evidence that load growth has paused.
What to watch
Last Energy’s October 20 deadline. Whether part one of the LWA application lands on time will say more about Last Energy’s readiness than the assessment plan does.
Crane’s operating license action. The EA was the easy half. Watch for the NRC’s decision on reversing the shutdown certifications and restoring the operating license.
Long Mott’s full-committee ACRS letter. It’s the gate between subcommittee review and the staff’s final safety evaluation.
Eielson’s draft EA. The first document likely to name the vendor, the capacity and the scope of preconstruction work.
LLWG. If it’s quiet a fourth week, that’s a pipeline problem before it’s a market signal.
Sources: NRC ADAMS ML26231A018 (Crane final EA/FONSI, Docket 50-289); ML26257A073 (NRC letter to the Department of the Air Force on Eielson AFB, Sept. 16, 2026); ML26260A100 (Last Energy pre-application readiness assessment plan, Caldwell County, TX); ML26257A407 (ACRS subcommittee materials, Long Mott Generating Station, Sept. 15, 2026); SPP generator interconnection queue, GEN-2021-090. Outside Dynawatt’s usual source set: World Nuclear News (June 8, 2026) on the FERC Eddystone waiver; Neutron Bytes (Aug. 11, 2026) on Crane’s remaining licensing steps; Utility Dive on the Texas, Utah and Last Energy suit against the NRC.
Dynawatt is an independent brief compiled from public sources (ISO/RTO interconnection queues, FERC notices in the Federal Register, ERCOT Large Load Working Group, PJM stakeholder committees, NRC ADAMS reactor licensing records, and DOE Loan Programs Office announcements). It is informational, non-advocacy, and not investment advice.