NextEra Energy has secured a $1.9 billion loan from the US Department of Energy to restart the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant in Iowa, a project backed by Google as demand from artificial-intelligence data centres drives renewed interest in dormant reactors.
The facility, which has been offline since 2020, is expected to return to service in 2029. The loan is the second major federal financing package for a shuttered US nuclear plant in the past year, underlining the Trump administration’s support for nuclear power as a source of reliable electricity for the technology industry.
James Danly, the Deputy Secretary of Energy, said the restart would “drive down electricity costs”. The department did not provide further details explaining how the project would achieve that.
Google-linked Iowa nuclear plant to produce 615 megawatts
NextEra plans to increase the plant’s output during the refurbishment, taking its capacity to 615 megawatts, or an additional 14 megawatts compared with its previous level.
Only 50 megawatts will be reserved for the local power co-operative, according to NextEra chief executive John Ketchum. That would meet about 18 per cent of Iowa’s electricity-demand growth since 2021.
Google said last year that it intended to help bring Duane Arnold back into operation and is reportedly considering building as many as six data centres close to the site. The plant was mothballed after an intense rainstorm damaged it, at a time when plentiful and cheap natural gas had made nuclear generation less attractive.
The economics of the US power market have since shifted sharply. The expansion of AI, alongside wider electrification, has prompted technology companies and utilities to seek large supplies of dependable electricity, with data centres expected to almost triple their power consumption by 2035.
Restarting existing nuclear facilities is seen as a faster route to new low-carbon generation than constructing entirely new plants. Microsoft has agreed to support the revival of a reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, which is scheduled to restart in 2028 with an output of 835 megawatts.
The Department of Energy provided Constellation Energy with a $1 billion loan for that project last year. Constellation has also secured Meta as a customer for the clean-energy attributes from its 1.1-gigawatt Clinton Clean Energy Center in Illinois, helping to protect the plant from closure.
Duane Arnold is smaller than those facilities, but its proposed restart forms part of a wider effort to bring recently closed US nuclear plants back online. Other potential candidates exist, although plants that have been shut for longer, including San Onofre in California, would require more extensive work before they could resume generation.
