The U.S. Department of Energy has completed a $1.9 billion loan to NextEra Energy to bring the Duane Arnold nuclear facility back online, the agency announced Tuesday. The 615-megawatt plant in Linn County, Iowa, shut down in 2020 after a destructive windstorm, though its closure had already been scheduled due to financial pressures. Google will serve as the main customer for the revived facility, using its electricity to support the tech giant's expanding cloud computing and artificial intelligence operations in Iowa.
NextEra is aiming for a 2029 restart date for Duane Arnold. A study by Strategic Economic Research projected that restarting the facility could produce more than $9 billion in economic value for Iowa across 25 years. The loan represents the third nuclear plant restart financed by the Energy Department, which said it has completed four simultaneous conditional commitments and financial closings under the Trump administration. Through its NextEra Energy Resources division, the company has a development pipeline totaling 35.1 gigawatts and a baseline target of securing 15 gigawatts of new generation capacity to serve large-scale electricity users by 2035, officials disclosed during a July earnings call.
"It shows how America can support rapid economic growth and rising electricity demand while helping keep power affordable for existing customers," NextEra Chairman, President and CEO John Ketchum said in a statement. The project "is about delivering new power to meet new demand," Ketchum added. The Energy Department did not immediately respond to inquiries about how the loan aligns with a ratepayer protection commitment designed to prevent residential consumers from subsidizing large data center infrastructure.
The restart reflects mounting interest in nuclear power to satisfy electricity requirements from data centers, including efforts to revive shuttered facilities. Constellation Energy is pursuing a restart of the 835-megawatt Crane nuclear plant, previously called Three Mile Island Unit 1, in a project estimated to cost roughly $1.6 billion. NextEra is currently attempting to buy Dominion Energy in an all-stock deal that would expand the combined company's large-load pipeline to 130 gigawatts. With 10 million customers spanning four states, the proposed merger could establish the world's largest regulated electric utility, though political opposition has grown over worries it might increase household electricity prices or reduce service quality.