The US Department of Energy closed a loan of up to $1.9 billion to NextEra Energy on September 8, 2026, to bring the Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Iowa back online. The 615 MW facility, shut down since 2020, is expected to restart in the first quarter of 2029.
The project is backed by a 25-year power purchase agreement with Google, announced in late October 2025. The Mountain View company will use the output as a continuous carbon-free supply for its cloud and artificial intelligence operations in the state. The loan came from the Office of Energy Dominance Financing, the current name of the Loan Programs Office. Ahead of the financing, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had approved the waiver needed to reconnect the plant to the grid.
Duane Arnold is a boiling water reactor that entered service in February 1975 in Palo, about a dozen kilometers from Cedar Rapids. NextEra shut it down in October 2020, after a severe windstorm damaged the cooling towers and repairs were judged uneconomical. Five years later, the market has changed. Data center electricity demand has made an idea that once seemed out of reach worth pursuing. The Department of Energy is now financing three restarts: besides Duane Arnold, Constellation’s Crane plant, with a $1 billion loan, and Holtec’s Palisades, with $1.52 billion.
The ownership picture is becoming simpler. NextEra has agreed to buy the 30% stakes held by Central Iowa Power Cooperative and Corn Belt Power Cooperative, and will reach 100% ownership. The former will continue to take the remaining output on the same terms as Google. Deputy Secretary of Energy James Danly said that 615 megawatts of baseload generation will help bring electricity costs down.
The local impact is quantified in an economic study: more than $9 billion in value for Iowa over 25 years, thousands of jobs in construction and refurbishment, more than 400 permanent positions, and about $75 million in tax revenue. Governor Kim Reynolds has signed a law with incentives for nuclear development. Alongside the restart, NextEra and Google signed a second agreement to evaluate new advanced nuclear generation in the United States.
If the schedule holds, Duane Arnold will become the template for how a shuttered plant is recovered with a guaranteed buyer and federal credit. For Europe, Italy included, the lesson is clear: large electricity consumers can finance nuclear capacity before it is even operating.
