Iowa’s Last Restartable Reactor Gets a $1.9 Billion Loan

The U.S. Energy Department closed a loan of up to $1.9 billion on Sept. 8 for NextEra Energy to restart Iowa’s Duane Arnold nuclear plant. The 615-megawatt reactor in Linn County has been idle since 2020, and it is the third federally financed attempt to bring a retired U.S. reactor back.

No company has yet succeeded at that job. After Duane Arnold, the cheap inventory is gone, and the department’s much larger new-build loan program still has no named utilities putting up the equity required to draw the money.

A $1.9 Billion Close for Iowa’s Only Reactor

The close came through the Office of Energy Dominance Financing, the shop that used to be called the Loan Programs Office. NextEra, the Florida-based owner of a large mix of wind, solar, gas and nuclear plants, will use the cheap federal debt to refurbish the single boiling-water unit at Palo, outside Cedar Rapids, and aim for commercial operation in the first quarter of 2029, pending Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval.

Deputy Secretary of Energy James P. Danly said returning 615 megawatts of baseload power would cut electricity costs and support thousands of jobs. Gregory A. Beard, director of the financing office, called Duane Arnold the kind of project that restores U.S. nuclear capacity and energy security. The department says the restart will power nearly 500,000 homes, create nearly 1,500 construction jobs, and support more than 450 jobs once the plant is running.

THE IOWA LOAN AT A GLANCE

• The money: A federal loan of up to $1.9 billion reached financial close on Sept. 8, 2026.
• The machine: One boiling-water reactor rated at 615 megawatts, Iowa’s only nuclear plant, licensed through 2034.
• The jobs: Nearly 1,500 construction jobs and more than 450 operating jobs, per the Energy Department.
• The date: NextEra is aiming at the first quarter of 2029, with NRC licensing still open.

Danly toured the site the day the loan closed. The department’s own account of that visit is the official record of how Washington is selling the deal: power for nearly 500,000 homes, hundreds of jobs, and lower bills for Iowans.

Deputy Secretary Danly visited Duane Arnold Energy Center — celebrating the @ENERGY loan that will restart Iowa's only nuclear plant.

This plant will generate enough electricity to power nearly 500,000 homes, create hundreds of jobs, and lower electricity costs for Iowans! 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/V6pcwoDfyE

— U.S. Department of Energy (@ENERGY) September 8, 2026

Julie Kozeracki, acting chief investment officer in the loan office, put the queue in one line after the close: “Duane Arnold makes THREE nuclear restarts!” The office now says it has financed three nuclear plant restarts under the current administration. That is the whole restart class.

Palisades Loads Fuel While Crane Aims at 2027

Holtec International began loading fuel into the reactor at Palisades in Covert Township, Michigan, on Aug. 30, 2026. The company called it the first step-by-step return of a shuttered U.S. plant to power generation. The core takes 204 fuel assemblies, a mix of new bundles and partially used ones from the plant’s last cycles, and is built for 805 megawatts.

That work followed more than two years of inspections, steam-generator tube reinforcement, control-rod drive nozzle replacements, and primary-system cleaning. Palisades shut on May 20, 2022, and was defueled by June 10 that year. A Biden-era loan of $1.52 billion sits under the project. Power purchase agreements with Wolverine Power Cooperative and Hoosier Energy carry a contractual deadline of March 2027. The operating license runs to March 2031, and Holtec has told the NRC it intends to seek a 20-year renewal.

Constellation Energy is further back on the calendar and further along on offtake. It is trying to restart the former Three Mile Island Unit 1, now the Christopher M. Crane Clean Energy Center, for 835 megawatts by late 2027, with Microsoft as the data-center buyer and a $1 billion federal loan. Unit 1 shut on Sept. 26, 2019. The NRC is reviewing an exemption and license amendments that would allow operations through April 19, 2034. In June 2026, federal energy regulators approved a waiver letting Constellation shift 760 megawatts of interconnection rights from the retiring Eddystone fossil plant to Crane, a move meant to dodge years of transmission delay.

THE THREE RESTARTS IN LINE

Together the three units would put 2,255 megawatts back on regional grids. Palisades is the test case. Steam generators there were in worse shape than first thought, which pushed the schedule, and Holtec still has to finish loading, testing, and startup before anyone knows whether a retired U.S. reactor can actually make power again.

Most Retired Reactors Cannot Come Back

Duane Arnold is the last plant that experts have treated as a plausible, relatively cheap restart. The NRC’s decommissioning roster still lists it in SAFSTOR, a mothballed state, rather than active demolition. That status, plus a license that already runs to 2034, is why NextEra can try to reverse course without building a new nuclear island.

The rest of the retired fleet is a different problem. Once crews cut major components out of a plant, the bill to reverse the work starts to look like a new build. Holtec, which also owns several shutdown sites, has said too much dismantling has already been done at Oyster Creek in New Jersey, Pilgrim in Massachusetts, and Indian Point in New York for a Palisades-style revival to pay. A Holtec executive floated an Indian Point restart in 2025 at an estimated $10 billion and still needed political cover that has not arrived.

PLANTS ALREADY PAST A CHEAP RESTART

• Indian Point, New York: Units 1, 2 and 3 are in active decontamination, with major work underway since the last unit shut in 2021.
• Oyster Creek, New Jersey, and Pilgrim, Massachusetts: Holtec has said conventional restart is not feasible after decommissioning work already done.
• Vermont Yankee and Kewaunee: Both sit on the NRC decommissioning list, Vermont Yankee in active decontamination and Kewaunee long closed.
• Crystal River 3 and San Onofre: Large coastal units whose teardown is years along, with no owner running a restart docket.

Restarting a mothballed plant is still a slog. Crews have to hunt corrosion, replace turbines and other aged parts, and win NRC permission to leave decommissioning and hold fuel again. It is still far cheaper than pouring a new nuclear island. The only two reactors built from scratch in the United States in the past three decades, Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia, cost $35 billion, twice the first estimates, and arrived seven years late.

$17.5 Billion Still Waits on Named Partners

That Vogtle hangover is why the department’s other nuclear loan is still paper. On June 23, 2026, the same financing office issued conditional loans for 10 large reactors, a $17.5 billion package to buy long-lead parts for Westinghouse AP1000 units at five sites. Each reactor is rated at 1.1 gigawatts. Ten of them would total 11 gigawatts, enough, the department says, for nearly 10 million homes, with construction hoped for by 2030 and power in the mid-2030s.

The catch in the term sheet is equity, not interest. Westinghouse and a utility partner must each put up $500 million, $1 billion per two-reactor project, before they can touch the federal money. Westinghouse has signed letters of intent with seven potential partners and identified sites. The department has not named them. It still has to pick five, and each loan stays conditional until technical, legal, environmental, and financial boxes are checked.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the package would revive a supply chain and shave as much as three years off build times. The loans buy reactor vessels, steam generators, coolant pumps, and structural modules, not a finished plant. Until a named utility posts that $1 billion, the 11 gigawatts stay on a slide deck. The 2,255 megawatts in the restart line are the megawatts that can show up this decade.

The Iowa close also advances President Trump’s May 2025 order on the nuclear industrial base, which told the department to restart closed plants, raise output at running ones, and speed new construction. Restarts are where the cash has actually closed. New steel has not.

Google’s 25-Year Deal Pays for the Restart

The commercial case for Duane Arnold did not wait on the federal loan. On Oct. 27, 2025, Google posted a collaboration with NextEra Energy that included a 25-year contract to buy power from the plant and a wider hunt for new nuclear around the country. Google said the plant would put more than 600 megawatts of always-on nuclear onto the regional grid in early 2029, backing its cloud and AI load in Iowa, including a $7 billion state investment it had already announced.

Restarting a once fully operational plant is the fastest path to unlock large-scale nuclear power to meet AI growth in the near-term.

Google, Oct. 27, 2025 infrastructure post

Google said the contract enables the investment to restart the plant and covers the cost of the energy it produces. NextEra has said Iowa retail customers will not pay for the power Google buys. Central Iowa Power Cooperative will take the remaining output on the same terms, and NextEra has signed deals to buy CIPCO’s and Corn Belt Power Cooperative’s combined 30 percent stake, which would take NextEra to full ownership.

John Ketchum, NextEra’s chairman, president and CEO, said the restart is about matching new power to new demand and keeping that growth off existing customers’ bills.

Restarting Duane Arnold is about delivering new power to meet new demand while generating billions of dollars in economic value for Iowans. Just as importantly, it shows how America can support rapid economic growth and rising electricity demand while helping keep power affordable for existing customers.

John Ketchum, Chairman, President and CEO, NextEra Energy

The plant came online in 1974 and shut in 2020 after a storm wrecked a cooling tower. Owners had already decided that repairs did not pay, in a market defined by cheap natural gas and flat load. Data-center demand reversed that math. The loan cheapens NextEra’s debt. The Google contract is what makes the restart a sale rather than a stranded asset.

Shareholders Cleared the NextEra-Dominion Combination

The same company now has a second, much larger bet moving in parallel. NextEra and Dominion Energy, the Virginia-based utility, announced an all-stock combination on May 18, 2026, valued at $66.8 billion. Shareholders of both firms approved the deal on Sept. 3. NextEra holders would own about 74.5 percent of the combined company and Dominion holders 25.5 percent, on an exchange of 0.8138 NextEra shares per Dominion share plus a small cash piece.

The companies have filed at the Virginia State Corporation Commission, the North Carolina and South Carolina commissions, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the NRC. They still expect a close in the second half of 2027 and say they will run as separate firms until then. Ketchum would chair and lead the combined company. Dominion’s Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina brands would stay on the trucks.

A NextEra that already owns Duane Arnold, Point Beach in Wisconsin, and Seabrook in New Hampshire, and that is trying to absorb Dominion’s nuclear and data-center-heavy Virginia franchise, is exactly the sort of large incumbent the current loan office prefers. Critics of that shift have a simple complaint: cheap federal credit then lowers the borrowing cost of projects a balance sheet like NextEra’s could finance anyway. Google’s own post, which said the offtake enables the restart and covers production costs, is the document those critics will keep citing. The loan still matters on the margin. It is not what summoned the plant back from SAFSTOR.

What the NRC Still Has to Approve

The Iowa Utilities Commission granted a generating certificate on June 18, 2026, allowing NextEra Duane Arnold to construct, operate, and maintain the plant, and it told the company to keep filing updates on a final generator interconnection agreement and on NRC licensing. That state paper is not a restart. The NRC still has to move Duane Arnold off decommissioning and back to an operating license that can hold fuel and make power, a path Palisades is already walking and Crane is still briefing.

THE DUANE ARNOLD CLOCK

1. 1974: The plant enters commercial operation as Iowa’s only nuclear unit.
2. 2020: A storm damages a cooling tower; owners shut the reactor rather than repair it for a weak power market.
3. Oct. 27, 2025: Google and NextEra announce the 25-year offtake and a broader nuclear collaboration.
4. June 18, 2026: The Iowa Utilities Commission issues a generating certificate; NRC work continues.
5. Sept. 8, 2026: The Energy Department closes the loan of up to $1.9 billion.
6. First quarter of 2029: NextEra’s target for restart, if federal licensing holds.

Ketchum had already told investors, before the loan, that the company was making good progress on a grid connection. Fadi Diya, Holtec’s chief nuclear officer, said after Palisades fuel loading that the remaining work is disciplined execution. Duane Arnold’s remaining work is still on paper: inspections, parts, an NRC docket, and a 2029 date that sits more than two years behind Palisades’ contract and more than a year behind Crane’s target.

If Palisades reaches the grid, Iowa will have a working template and a warning about discovery in old steam generators and turbines. If it slips past March 2027, NextEra’s 2029 calendar will look less like a schedule and more like a hope. Either way, there is no fourth mothballed reactor behind Duane Arnold with a live license, a tech offtaker, and a federal close. After Palo, the country has to pour concrete.