Three US Reactor Restarts Add 2.25 GW for AI, Backed by Microsoft and Google

United States, Oct. 20 — Three shut-down US nuclear reactors are being brought back into service, adding about 2.25 GW of capacity by 2029, with Microsoft and Google tied to two of them, Tom's Hardware reports. The projects are Palisades in Michigan, the Crane Clean Energy Center in Pennsylvania and the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa.

All three lean on federal money. Palisades borrowed from the Department of Energy under the 2024 nuclear funding push, while the other two took loans issued under the 2025 program. The demand case is AI: each of the three states expects data centers to add more than a gigawatt of load around 2030.

The Technical Details

Palisades is furthest along, even though it was already being decommissioned. That makes it the first US reactor returned to work after dismantling had begun. Its operator, Holtec Palisades, loaded fuel in August 2026 and expects about 800 MW of output around March 2027.

Crane is the former Three Mile Island Unit 1, not the unit damaged in the 1979 accident. Constellation started the project in 2024, budgets $1.6 billion in total and took a $1 billion DOE loan in 2025.