Project will cost more than $1.6bn with reactor set to start delivering power by 2029
US electric utility NextEra has agreed to restart a nuclear power station in Iowa that will primarily provide power to Google as the tech giant races to secure clean energy to drive its artificial intelligence data centres.
NextEra, the world’s largest electric utility holding company by market capitalisation with a valuation of over $170bn (€145bn), will lead the redevelopment of the Duane Arnold nuclear power station after Google signed a 25-year agreement to buy electricity from the power station.
After being shut down for five years, it is expected to cost more than $1.6bn to restart the plant. Duane Arnold, a 601-MW boiling water reactor unit, is set to start delivering power by 2029, according to NextEra.
Duane Arnold began commercial operation in February 1975 and was shut down in October 2020. It had long been scheduled to go permanently offline in October 2020, but had been out of operation since 10 August 2020 when strong winds associated with a storm damaged the plant’s cooling towers and caused it to lose its offsite power source, resulting in an automatic shutdown. It was never restarted.
“Once operational, Google will purchase power from the plant as a 24/7 carbon-free energy source to help power Google’s growing cloud and AI infrastructure in Iowa, while also strengthening local grid reliability,” the companies said in a press release.
The Central Iowa Power Cooperative, the state’s largest energy provider, has agreed to buy surplus electricity leftover by Google.
Duane Arnold, Iowa’s only nuclear facility, in Palo, near Cedar Rapids, is the third commercial US nuclear plant to begin the process of restarting operations.
Microsoft and Constellation Energy signed an agreement last year, which is expected to see Unit 1 at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania to reopen in 2028. The single-unit Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan is scheduled to be the first shut-down US nuclear power plant to restart later this year.
Duane Arnold’s shutdown came at a time when the nuclear sector was struggling to compete with natural gas and other renewable energy sources due to high operating costs and public concerns about safety.
Tech Industry Backs Nuclear Energy
However, the Duane Arnold plans mark a trend, with energy demand in the US surging and tech companies like Google investing billions in developing power-hungry AI data centres.
Washington and the tech industry have been pushing nuclear energy as a potential way to address growing concerns about AI computing’s impacts on local energy grids.
Amazon has announced plans for a small modular reactor (SMR) facility in the state of Washington that will have 12 reactors producing a maximum of 960 MW of electricity.
The online retail and web services giant said the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility will be constructed in three phases, each with four of X-energy’s 80-MW, high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs).
Computer giant Oracle has said it is designing a data centre powered by three SMRs.
