The Department of Energy has closed a loan allowing NextEra to restart Duane Arnold's 615 megawatts, which Google has already reserved for its data centers.
The U.S. Department of Energy has finalized a loan of up to $1.9 billion to finance the recommissioning of the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant in Linn County, Iowa. The 615-megawatt reactor was shut down in 2020, after a storm damaged its cooling towers and when its operation was no longer profitable.
The electricity produced has already been sold: NextEra Energy has signed a twenty-five-year supply contract with Google to power the group's cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure in the state. Production is expected at the earliest in early 2029.
The operation is the third of its kind supported by the US administration, which is banking on the reopening of closed plants to absorb the electricity demand of data centers. The loan must be repaid with interest, as part of a subscriber protection commitment according to which it is large consumers, and not ordinary customers, who must finance the means of production built for their own needs.
Read the full article on the original source
Go to the source →