NextEra Energy 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 reliable power generation capacity to meet rising demand.
The restart is backed by a 25-year agreement signed by Alphabet’s 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.
Iowa’s lone nuclear plant, the Duane Arnold Energy Center closed in 2020 after operating for 45 years, with operations scheduled to resume in early 2029.
While efforts are now under way to restart three U.S. nuclear centers, including a Michigan power plant not connected to a technology deal, no mothballed nuclear power plant has resumed operations yet.
(Reporting by Pranav Mathur in Bengaluru; Editing by Jonathan Ananda)
