DOE Closes $1.9 Billion Loan for NextEra to Restart Iowa's Only Nuclear Plant, With Google as the Buyer

The federal government is bankrolling the resurrection of a nuclear plant that was already being decommissioned, and Big Tech is the reason it's happening.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Dominance Financing announced Tuesday it closed a loan of up to $1.9 billion to NextEra Energy to restart the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Linn County, Iowa, according to the DOE. The 615-megawatt plant, located in Palo, Iowa, has sat dark since August 10, 2020, when a derecho with gusts up to 140 mph destroyed its cooling towers, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's record cited by Startup Fortune.

Duane Arnold wasn't just an old plant nobody thought about. It was already headed for decommissioning before the storm hit, because cheap natural gas had made it uneconomical, according to TechCrunch. NextEra chose not to repair it back in 2020. Now the plant is coming back specifically because Google needs the power.

Google Signed the Deal That Made the Math Work

Google and NextEra announced last October that Google would buy power from a restarted Duane Arnold under a 25-year agreement to run its AI and cloud infrastructure in Iowa, according to BNN Bloomberg and the DOE. Without that long-term contract, the restart likely doesn't happen. Startup Fortune calls Google's involvement the thing that turned a risky, regulation-heavy rebuild into a financeable project.

Of the plant's 615 megawatts, NextEra said the Central Iowa Power Cooperative will get just 50 megawatts on terms consistent with Google's deal, according to Startup Fortune. TechCrunch notes that 50 megawatts would cover only about 18% of Iowa's electricity demand growth since 2021. The rest of the output goes to Google.

Deputy Energy Secretary James Danly said in the DOE's announcement that "returning 615 megawatts of reliable baseload generation will drive down electricity costs, while supporting thousands of American jobs." He did not explain the mechanism by which that happens, a gap TechCrunch specifically flagged. NextEra CEO John Ketchum offered a similar claim, saying the project would help "keep power affordable for existing customers," per Utility Dive.

Who's on the Hook If This Goes Sideways?

Utility Dive raised a question DOE didn't answer: how does a federally backed loan for a project whose primary output serves a single tech company square with the government's own pledge that residential ratepayers shouldn't foot the bill for data center infrastructure? DOE did not immediately respond to Utility Dive's inquiry on that point.

This is a loan, not a grant, so NextEra is expected to pay it back. But it's still $1.9 billion in federal financing exposure backing a restart whose main beneficiary is Alphabet, a company with a market capitalization in the trillions. Supporters of the deal, including NextEra and DOE, argue the plant adds badly needed baseload capacity to the regional grid and that Iowa still gets thousands of jobs and tax revenue regardless of who buys the power. A study by Strategic Economic Research, cited by Utility Dive and Anadolu Agency, estimated the restart could generate more than $9 billion in economic benefits for Iowa over 25 years and roughly $75 million in tax revenue.

The DOE says the project will create nearly 1,500 jobs during construction and support more than 450 permanent positions once operating. The Iowa Utilities Commission issued NextEra a certificate authorizing construction and operation in June 2026, according to Anadolu Agency. The restart still needs Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing approval before NextEra can bring the reactor back online, per the DOE's own announcement.

Part of a Bigger Pattern

Duane Arnold is the third nuclear restart the Trump administration's Energy Dominance Financing office has funded, according to the DOE. The first was a $1 billion loan to Constellation Energy to restart the 835-megawatt Crane plant, formerly Three Mile Island Unit 1, which Microsoft has contracted to buy power from starting in 2028, according to Utility Dive and TechCrunch. The third is the Palisades plant in Michigan, restarted by Holtec and not tied to any tech company deal, according to BNN Bloomberg. As of Tuesday, Palisades has already returned to service, having resumed operations in late 2025 and becoming the first U.S. nuclear plant to restart after being taken offline for decommissioning. The Crane and Duane Arnold restarts remain in progress and have not yet resumed generating power.

Separately, NextEra is pursuing an all-stock acquisition of Dominion Energy that would create the largest regulated electric utility in the world, according to Utility Dive, which reported that political concern over the deal is growing amid worries it could raise prices or degrade service for the combined company's 10 million customers. That deal is unrelated to the Duane Arnold financing but underscores how much consolidation and capital NextEra is deploying as the AI power race accelerates.

The open question for Iowa ratepayers: NextEra and DOE say the restart will keep costs down for existing customers, but neither has published the underlying math. Whether that promise holds once the plant is actually generating power in 2029, and whether the NRC grants the licensing approvals the restart still needs, remain unresolved.