The New Gold Rush: Tech Giants Race to Restart Old Nuclear Plants

Microsoft entered into a partnership with an electricity provider a long time ago to bring a decommissioned nuclear power plant back online. Now Google is following suit and also wants to put a nuclear power plant back into operation.

Google wants to reuse the nuclear power plant that opened in 1975

Like Google and the young company NextEra have announced the so-called Duane Arnold Energy Center in the US state of Iowa is expected to generate electricity again in the coming years. This is a nuclear power plant that was shut down in 2020 and was decommissioned after a weather-related accident. A strong storm had damaged parts of a secondary protection system designed to prevent the escape of radioactive gases.

As part of the cooperation now concluded between Google and NextEra, the nuclear power plant with a total output of 615 megawatts is to be brought back online. Commissioning is currently planned for 2029, with Google wanting to purchase the majority of the energy generated there over a period of 25 years. It is said that whatever power is left will be sold to the local power grid operator.

New data centers already under construction nearby

Google is currently planning in the area around the power plant a new data center which will also be built near the small town of Palo, where the Duane Arnold Energy Center is also located. The local authorities still have to approve the project. Even if this project does not come to fruition, there is one that is already under construction Google’s new data center in Cedar Rapids another nearby location that will be supplied with energy by the newly started-up old nuclear power plant.

As mentioned, Google is not the first US technology company that wants to put an old nuclear power plant back into operation in order to operate AI data centers. Microsoft had already announced a similar partnership with the company Constellation Energy in 2024, as part of which they want to bring the “Three Mile Island” nuclear power plant, which was shut down in 2019, back online from 2028.

The reactor will then deliver 835 megawatts to power the data centers behind the Azure Cloud, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. For US technology companies, putting old nuclear reactors back into operation is about securing the most cost-effective energy sources possible in the long term. With the increasing number of data centers, which are primarily intended to make AI services possible, electricity prices are already rising, which is also massively affecting companies and private customers in many areas of the USA.