Google and NextEra to revive major Iowa nuclear facility as AI energy demand surges (www.cnbc.com)

Google and NextEra Energy announced plans to restart the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa — a 615 MW nuclear plant that shut in 2020 — with a target online date in early 2029 pending regulatory approval. Under the deal Google will buy 24/7 carbon-free power to feed its growing cloud and AI infrastructure in the state, while the Central Iowa Power Cooperative will take surplus electricity. The move revives an idled baseload asset rather than building new capacity, signaling a pragmatic approach to securing reliable, low‑carbon electricity to support power-hungry AI data centers. The announcement is significant because U.S. electricity consumption hit a record in 2024 driven in part by expanding data centers, pushing Big Tech and policymakers to reevaluate nuclear as a tool for decarbonization and grid reliability. The Duane Arnold deal follows similar partnerships (e.g., Constellation-Microsoft, Oracle’s small-reactor plans) and highlights technical and market implications: baseload nuclear can stabilize grids strained by AI workloads and intermittent renewables, but revivals face regulatory, cost and public‑acceptance hurdles. For the AI/ML community, these developments matter because they affect energy availability, latency and sustainability of future compute expansion — and illustrate how infrastructure choices will shape where and how large models are deployed.