Abstract:
NextEra Energy, the owner of the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa, USA, where Google plans to restart, has received a $1.9 billion loan from the U.S. Department of Energy to support the renovation of the nuclear power plant. Google previously announced in October 2025 that it would push the decommissioned nuclear power plant back into operation.
This loan is the second large amount of financing recently provided by the U.S. government to support the restart of nuclear power plants. It shows that the Trump administration is considering the restoration of closed nuclear power facilities as an important way to meet the power needs of technology companies' artificial intelligence data centers. Previously, the U.S. Department of Energy provided a $1 billion loan to Constellation Energy to restart a reactor at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant in Pennsylvania.
U.S. Department of Energy Deputy Secretary James Danley said that the Iowa nuclear power plant is expected to restart in 2029, which will help reduce electricity costs, but he did not further explain how it will be achieved. NextEra Energy CEO John Ketchum previously revealed on an earnings call that the power station will provide 50 megawatts of power to local electric cooperatives. This amount of electricity is equivalent to about 18% of Iowa’s new electricity demand since 2021, which is the year before ChatGPT came out.
Google reportedly plans to build up to six data centers near the Duane Arnold Energy Center. The nuclear power plant has been out of service since 2020, when a severe rainstorm caused damage to the facilities. NextEra did not choose to repair it at that time, but instead mothballed the power station. As cheap natural gas flooded the market, the economic attractiveness of nuclear power decreased significantly at the time, and the costs of continued operation became prohibitive.
But the electricity market environment has changed significantly over the past six years. The rapid expansion of the artificial intelligence industry, coupled with the acceleration of the electrification of the overall economy, has utilities and electricity suppliers scrambling to find new sources of electricity generation. It is expected that by 2035, new data centers will nearly triple the industry's current electricity demand.
In this context, closed nuclear power plants are gradually becoming an important choice for technology companies to quickly obtain stable, low-carbon power. Compared with renewable energy sources such as wind power and photovoltaics, nuclear power can continue to provide relatively stable power that is not affected by weather changes, so it is particularly suitable to power artificial intelligence data centers that need to operate around the clock.
Microsoft signed an agreement with Constellation Energy two years ago to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island that was shut down in 2019. The reactor is scheduled to return to power generation in 2028 with an installed capacity of 835 MW. Meanwhile, the Clinton Clean Energy Center in Illinois was also at risk of closing, but Constellation Energy later found a new customer for it, Meta. Meta will purchase all the clean energy attributes of the 1.1 GW nuclear power plant, and the actual power generated by the nuclear power plant will still be transmitted to the local power grid, and Meta will use relevant certificates to offset the carbon emissions generated by other operations.
The power demand of Meta’s Hyperion artificial intelligence data center is particularly huge. It is estimated that if the project is fully completed, it will require as much electricity as ten natural gas power plants to operate, and will consume more electricity than the entire state of South Dakota.
The Duane Arnold Energy Center is smaller in comparison, but NextEra plans to improve equipment efficiency during the renovation process, adding an additional 14 megawatts of power generation capacity to the power station, bringing the total installed capacity to 615 megawatts. After the power station is restarted, it will supply power to Google through a 25-year power purchase agreement, and part of the power will also be used to enhance the reliability of the local power grid.
At present, among the nuclear power plants that have been shut down in the United States, Duane Arnold, Three Mile Island and the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Michigan are considered to be the easiest facilities to restart. According to previous analysis by Utility Dive, there may be one or two nuclear power plants with similar potential in the United States, but these facilities, including the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant in California, have been out of service for longer, and the repairs and modifications required to put them back into operation are also more complex.
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