The Department of Energy just closed a loan worth up to $1.9 billion to restart an Iowa nuclear plant — and the biggest beneficiary is Google, one of the richest companies on Earth, which needs the juice to run its AI data centers.
This is corporate welfare dressed up as energy policy. The Duane Arnold Energy Center shut down in 2020 after storm damage, and its owner, NextEra Energy, decided to mothball it rather than repair it. Cheap natural gas made nuclear unprofitable. Now that AI has sent electricity demand through the roof, Google wants the plant back — and taxpayers are helping foot the bill.
Deputy Energy Secretary James Danly claims the restart will "drive down electricity costs," though as TechCrunch noted, he did not explain how. Here's a clue: NextEra CEO John Ketchum said on an earnings call last year that just 50 megawatts of the plant's 615 megawatts will go to the local power cooperative. The rest feeds Google's AI infrastructure. That 50 megawatts covers roughly 18% of Iowa's demand growth since 2021 — the year before ChatGPT launched. The other 565 megawatts? That's for Google, which is reportedly planning up to six data centers near the plant and sinking $7 billion into Iowa cloud and AI infrastructure.
The Verge pointed out something telling: the Energy Department's own press release doesn't mention Google's involvement. If this deal is so great for ratepayers, why hide who's really benefiting?
This is the second such loan. Last year, DOE gave Constellation Energy $1 billion to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island for Microsoft's AI operations. Meta is cutting its own nuclear deals. The pattern is clear: Big Tech needs massive electricity for AI, and the federal government is happy to socialize the risk while privatizing the profit.
The Trump administration has gone all-in on nuclear, signing executive orders to speed development and even redirect surplus plutonium to private companies. Trump Media merged with nuclear fusion company TAE Technologies. Everyone in Washington seems to agree: taxpayer backing for Big Tech's energy needs is bipartisan policy. That's usually exactly where the public gets sold out.
Gizmodo framed the story as part of a "revival of nuclear power" driven by AI demand — a clean-energy success story. They buried the central question: why does a company sitting on over $100 billion in cash need a taxpayer-backed loan to power its own data centers?
The DOE loan program means if NextEra defaults, taxpayers eat the loss. If the plant succeeds, Google gets cheap power and NextEra pockets the returns. Heads they win, tails you lose.
AI data centers are expected to nearly triple the sector's electricity demand by 2035. The open question is how much of that burden will be carried by Americans who neither own the data centers nor use them — but whose tax dollars back the loans and whose utility bills keep climbing.
