Google to bring shuttered nuclear power plant back from the dead

Google announced this week that it is working with NextEra Energy revive A nuclear power plant in Iowa that was shut down in 2020.

NextEra has been looking for a partner to reopen the reactor for the past year, and it found one in Google, which is steadily adding zero-carbon energy sources to power its growing data center fleet.

Neither company disclosed financial terms of the deal.

The Duane Arnold Energy Center was shut down after a summer derecho (major rainstorm) damaged part of the secondary containment system that would have prevented the release of radioactive gases.

The power plant was originally designed to generate 601 MW of electricity, and if the rebuild goes as planned, the renovated reactor will be able to generate an additional 14 MW of electricity.

NextEra hopes to reopen the facility in 2029, and Google has agreed to buy most of its power for 25 years. The remainder will be sold to Central Iowa Power Cooperative under the same terms. The company currently holds a 20% stake in the Duane Arnold Power Plant, although NextEra said it has agreements to buy out both the co-op and other minority owners.

Nuclear power is experiencing a renaissance as technology companies and data center developers search for new sources of power as demand for electricity wakes up after more than a decade of slumber.

The Iowa reactor is not the first to be brought back from the dead. Last year, Microsoft said it would be working on Constellation Energy Two Restart a furnace at Three Mile Island which closed in 2019. Constellation said it expects to spend $1.6 billion. If all goes according to plan, the 835-megawatt reactor should come online in 2028.

Restarting the reactors is seen as a shortcut to bringing new nuclear capacity to the grid, possibly taking years off the time it would take to build a new power plant. But they are still year-long projects, locking them into competition with new natural gas power plants, which take years to develop.

Meanwhile there are companies like Google turning towards the sun And batteries, which can be deployed in months rather than years, dramatically reduce the time it takes to power a new data center.