For decades, the environmental lobby worldwide has generally opposed the deployment and operation of nuclear power plants. Their opposition not only stemmed from catastrophic accidents such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, but also from the lack of a suitable disposal strategy for long-term nuclear waste, which still remains a thorny issue. This changed earlier this month, when the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) filed a brief in favor of steps to start re-opening the Duane Arnold Nuclear Energy Center in Iowa. The Fusion Report will look into this sea-change in attitude, and what it portends for future energy considerations.
What is the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Palo, Iowa?
The Duane Arnold Energy Center, which sits on a several-hundred acre site northwest of Cedar Rapids, is Iowa’s only commercial nuclear power plant. Built around a single General Electric boiling water reactor, the plant was originally licensed in 1975, operated at over 1,900 megawatts of thermal energy, translating to a little over 600 megawatts of electric output at full power. It was recently operated by NextEra Energy Duane Arnold, LLC, with minority stakes historically held by regional cooperatives. Duane Arnold was shut down in 2020, following damage from a powerful storm that affected its cooling infrastructure. Interest in utilizing the reactor for a planned data center has since brought the plant back into focus, and NextEra has embarked on a project to restart the facility with support from major technology companies. Plans call for Duane Arnold to return to service later this decade at roughly 600 megawatts of output, which would contribute substantially to regional grid reliability.
The Data Center Electrical Power Picture in Eastern Iowa
Electricity for new data centers in Iowa is both relatively abundant and increasingly strained, creating a mixed picture for future projects. Iowa has one of the nation’s highest shares of in-state generation from wind and other renewables, with 13.8 GW of utility-scale renewable capacity by early 2025, which has attracted major cloud providers. Utilities are also planning major additions, like Alliant’s 1 GW of new wind power, and MidAmerican’s 800MW solar buildout, for feeding the growing data center demand. Data centers already account for 11 percent of Iowa’s electrical consumption, and new data centers require dedicated generation, transmission upgrades, and long-term power contracts to secure sufficient supply. This is what’s driving the restart of the Duane Arnold nuclear plant, which will provide Google with more than 600 megawatts of carbon-free power specifically for AI and cloud infrastructure in the state.
Enter the NRDC’s About-Face on Energy From Nuclear Fission
Historically, environmental groups have opposed nuclear power for a number of reasons. From disasters like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima to disposal of nuclear waste to thermal pollution due to the discharge of cooling wastewater, they have found few reasons to like nuclear fission, in spite of the fact that it is essentially carbon free. Which is where the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) and the Duane Arnold Nuclear Energy Center come in. In a commentary called “Rising Demand, Real Choices”, the NRDC laid out the case for supporting the Duane Arnold restart.
In a letter at the beginning of March, the NRDC filed comments with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) setting conditions on which it would support the ownership transfer of the license to operate the Duane Arnold plant, the first phase of the restart process. While the NRDC opposes the use of decommissioning trust funds to restart the plant, it stated that NextEra meets the technical and financial qualification standards required for the license transfer. More importantly, the NRDC cited the Trump administration’s actions to be a fundamental change in the landscape that requires new actions and approaches; specifically, they see that step enabling the rise of “dirty energy” based on fossil fuels enabled by the repeal of the endangerment finding.
The rationale is simple: the energy landscape in the US has undergone a fundamental shift in the last few years that was unanticipated by policymakers, regulators and advocates. The result is the spiking of electricity bills for many households and businesses, ostensibly due to the increased demand for energy from the growing number of data centers, especially the gigawatt-scale ones used for artificial intelligence (AI). More importantly, pollution related to fossil fuels is once again on the rise in the United States, due mostly to the growth in natural gas power plants, but also ones that utilize coal as well. While nuclear power is not optimal In the view of the NRDC and its issues still remain, nuclear power does reduce the impact of air pollution, something that fossil fuel power plants cannot do. In that sense, the restart of the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant is a net benefit, versus utilizing fossil fuel power plants to generate electricity for the new data centers.
Conclusion: Tradeoffs are Often Required in the Real World
As is often said, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”, but the reverse can often be true as well. While power from nuclear fission has its detractions (and they are significant), we are entering a point where air pollution, especially due to electricity generation, is expected to rise quickly, causing long-term environmental damage. As Department of Energy (DoE) Secretary Chris Wright observed, we are entering a time when we have to use all available energy resources to meet all of our electricity needs, including nuclear energy, renewables, hydro, and (for better or worse) fossil fuels. The trade-offs are to use the energy resources that are clean, and to minimize the time and amount that we have to use the ones that are not until resources such as fusion energy become available.
