The United States is making an unprecedented attempt to revive three shuttered nuclear plants to meet rising energy demand, including from large-scale data centres. No commercial nuclear reactor is known to have resumed generating electricity after beginning the decommissioning process that takes it out of service, though some reactors have restarted after long outages. As nuclear plants revived with federal support return to the grid, the Trump administration is betting that old reactors offer the fastest route to large amounts of carbon-free power.
Three Nuclear Plants Revived With $4.4 Billion in Loans
The Department of Energy is lending as much as $4.4 billion to restart the Palisades Power Plant in Michigan, the Crane Clean Energy Center on Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island and the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa. Together they will restore a combined 2.25 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power roughly two million homes and businesses. All three nuclear plants revived through these loans closed before their operating licences expired, largely because the electricity they produced was considered too expensive.
That calculation has changed. Two of the plants have contracts with Big Tech companies that will pay a premium to secure large amounts of carbon-free energy for data centres. The Trump administration is pushing hard to deploy nuclear power for artificial intelligence and manufacturing, and it is also lending billions of dollars for upgrades to produce more electricity from currently operating nuclear plants.
Big Tech Backing as Nuclear Plants Revived for Data Centres
The Duane Arnold Energy Center, which ceased operations in 2020, is being restarted with help from a federal loan of as much as $1.9 billion. The plant will provide about 615 megawatts, enough electricity for almost 500,000 homes, and could be restarted in the first quarter of 2029, though licence approvals from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are still pending. The Palisades plant in Michigan received about $1.5 billion in financing under the previous administration, while Constellation Energy received about $1 billion from the Trump administration to restart its shuttered Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania.
With nuclear plants revived for the age of artificial intelligence, technology firms are lining up as customers. Microsoft is tied to the Crane restart at Three Mile Island, Google to Duane Arnold, and rural cooperatives to Palisades. Soaring power demand from AI data centres and electrification has sent electricity prices higher and strained America’s ageing grid. For communities near the sites, nuclear plants revived also mean skilled jobs returning to towns that lost them years ago, adding local political support to the economics.
Why Restarting Beats Building New
Restarting a reactor is a fairly quick way to get a lot of electricity, and it is cheaper than building a new, large reactor, according to nuclear engineering experts. The sites already have what new energy projects struggle to obtain: approved grid connections, water for cooling, licensed land and high-voltage transmission lines. The prospect of nuclear plants revived rather than built new appeals to utilities facing long permitting queues. There is demand in the country for more power, and these assets were previously hooked up and operable, so they can relatively quickly generate electricity again.
For anyone who wants zero-carbon power, nuclear provides it around the clock, unlike intermittent renewables. For the Trump administration, which strongly favours nuclear energy, the restarts fit the broader story of expanding domestic energy production to meet the demands of a growing economy.
A Wider Nuclear Push Across the US
The three restarts are part of a wider campaign. Trump has signed an executive order that aims to get 10 large conventional reactors under construction by 2030, and he has called for government funds to support the restart of shuttered nuclear plants. The Energy Department’s financing comes as the White House prioritises efforts to curb surging utility bills ahead of November’s midterm elections. Officials say more nuclear plants revived in future rounds could follow if the first three succeed.
Whether more closed reactors follow will depend on economics, regulation and local support. But with nuclear plants revived at three sites and billions in federal loans flowing, the United States is testing whether its atomic past can power its digital future.