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- Restart depends on Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing approvals
- Google signed 25-year power purchase agreement for 615-megawatt plant last year
- Duane Arnold Energy Center closed in 2020, scheduled to resume operations in early 2029
Sept 8 (Reuters) – NextEra Energy (NEE.N) said on Tuesday it has secured a U.S. Department of Energy loan of up to $1.9 billion to support the restart of its Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa, as the country seeks to add power generation capacity to meet rising demand.
The restart, which depends on licensing approvals by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is backed by a 25-year agreement signed by Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Google last year to buy power from the 615-megawatt nuclear plant.
Surging electricity demand, including from AI data centers, is pressuring U.S. power grids and spurring interest in extending the life of existing nuclear plants and bringing shuttered reactors back online.
Gregory Beard, the director of the department’s office of Energy Dominance Financing, said Duane Arnold is “exactly the kind of investment that will help restore American nuclear leadership, strengthen our energy security, and deliver the affordable, reliable power Americans need to fuel our nation’s future.”
Iowa’s lone nuclear plant, the Duane Arnold Energy Center, closed in 2020 after operating for 45 years. Operations are scheduled to resume in early 2029.
While efforts are under way to restart three U.S. nuclear centers, including Holtec’s 800 MW Palisades plant in Michigan, which is not connected to a technology deal, no mothballed nuclear power plant has resumed operations yet.
In 2024, Holtec got a loan of up to $1.52 billion from the Energy Department. The company had said the plant would restart in late 2025, but it has been delayed.
Last year, the Trump administration said it had loaned Constellation Energy Corp $1 billion to restart a nuclear reactor at a Pennsylvania plant formerly known as Three Mile Island. A separate unit at the plant shut in 1979 after an accident that chilled the nuclear power industry.
Constellation signed a deal in late 2024 with Microsoft (MSFT.O) to restart the 835-megawatt reactor, which shut in 2019. The electricity from the restart would offset that used by Microsoft’s data center.
Reporting by Pranav Mathur in Bengaluru and Timothy Gardner in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Ananda and Paul Simao
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