The project will create “thousands” of direct and indirect jobs
NextEra Energy has secured a $1.9 billion loan from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to restart its Duane Arnold Energy Center, a 615-megawatt nuclear facility in Linn County, Iowa. Power from the plant will be purchased by Google for its AI data centers, but will also boost local grid reliability and create “thousands of direct and indirect jobs,” NextEra said last year.
With the rise of AI, Google and other data center companies have scrambled to find the energy to power them. Google is committed to offsetting its energy consumption with green and renewable energy sources and achieved this goal in 2018. However, the company recently partnered with a natural gas power plant to provide energy to one of its data centers in Texas. Other data centers run by Tesla, Meta and others have also used dirty power from the grid or even gotten their own natural gas power generators.
So Google’s nuclear deal could be a game-changer, giving the company relatively clean energy in terms of emissions (but not nuclear waste). The DOE plans to restart three mothballed power plants, both to power the grid and AI data centers, so the new loan is a clear step toward that goal.
The Duane Arnold Energy Center has had an interesting final chapter. A tropical storm that hit the state on August 10, 2020 with gusts of up to 230 km/ha toppled the cooling towers, bringing an end to the plant that was supposed to be taken offline anyway. Now, the demand for data center power has brought it back to life, with the operator planning to restart power production by 2029. However, a lot can happen in the meantime, and $1.9 billion is small change in the nuclear power game.
