Three retired US nuclear plants are being brought back online with help from federal loans. The Department of Energy is lending up to $4.4 billion to restart Palisades in Michigan, the Crane Clean Energy Center on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, and Duane Arnold in Iowa. Together they would add about 2.25 GW of firm, carbon-free power, enough for roughly 2 million homes and businesses. Google and Microsoft have signed contracts to buy power from two of the plants, which changed the economics after the reactors closed as uneconomic. Restarting a reactor is faster than building new large nuclear capacity, but it is not simple. Palisades already hit a snag when a fuel assembly tilted during loading. The plant needs to be back online by March 2027 under its power purchase agreements. The other restarts target 2027 and 2029. No commercial US reactor has ever restarted after beginning decommissioning, so these projects are setting a precedent. The outcome matters for grid decarbonization, data center power procurement, and how federal financing is used in the energy transition.
