FERC grants NextEra waiver to advance Duane Arnold nuclear restart

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has approved NextEra Energy’s request for a waiver allowing the company to move forward with plans to recommission the shuttered Duane Arnold nuclear power plant in Palo.

The move clears a procedural hurdle in the company’s effort to restart Iowa’s only nuclear power plant by the end of the decade.

In an order issued Monday, FERC said NextEra Energy Duane Arnold, LLC (NEDA) met the criteria for a waiver of Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO, provisions governing interconnection requests. The ruling lets NextEra consolidate existing interconnection rights and use MISO’s generating facility replacement process to support the plant’s restart.

MISO is the electric grid operator for the central United States. It coordinates generation and transmission, runs regional power markets, ensures reliability, and works with utilities and regulators to plan future grid needs.

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“NextEra has acted in good faith in investing significant capital and securing interconnection rights in order to pursue a consolidated agreement necessary to recommission Duane Arnold,” the commission wrote. It noted that granting the waiver would “support the timely and cost-effective recommissioning” of the facility and address the “urgent need for high-capacity baseload generation.”

Duane Arnold, a single-unit boiling water reactor, entered service in 1975. It was decommissioned in 2020 amid unfavorable economics for nuclear power. The closure, scheduled for Oct. 30, 2020, was hastened by the August 2020 derecho, which caused “extensive” damage to the facility’s cooling towers.

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NextEra says recommissioning is needed to meet surging electricity demand driven by data centers and other energy-intensive growth. The company expects to invest $50 million to $100 million this year alone to keep the project on track for commercial operation between late 2028 and December 2029.

Following Duane Arnold’s 2020 shutdown, NextEra sought to repurpose the site’s transmission connection for a series of solar projects, one of which was put into commercial operation in December of 2024 and sold to an Iowa subsidiary of Alliant Energy. The remaining three solar projects have not entered commercial operation.

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Now the company is asking to fold those solar interconnection rights together to support the addition of needed baseload nuclear capacity to the MISO system. Combining the agreements would restore Duane Arnold’s original historic peak capacity of up to 619 megawatts.

NextEra sought the waiver in part because Duane Arnold cannot be restarted by Oct. 29, 2026, the deadline for the site’s solar projects to begin operating before their interconnection agreements expire, federal regulators said.

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“Granting the requested waiver will allow NEDA to make efficient use of the existing interconnection rights and associated infrastructure, as well as provide commercial and financial certainty to support the recommissioning effort,” the company wrote.

Without the waiver, NextEra would have been forced to submit a new interconnection request and undergo a multiyear study process, risking the loss of existing rights and delaying the project. The commission said such an outcome would have “increased the cost of and delayed the recommissioning of Duane Arnold.”

Marion resident’s concerns are ‘speculative,’ FERC says

The order drew opposition from Pamela Mackey-Taylor, a resident of Marion and state lobbyist for the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club, who filed a protest citing her general opposition to nuclear power and concern that solar projects tied to the Duane Arnold site could be abandoned. She argued that the waiver “will have undesirable consequences for third parties” and conflicts with Iowa’s statutory preference for renewable energy.

Mackey-Taylor as well argued there is no proof that recommissioning Duane Arnold in lieu of building solar facilities will be beneficial to ratepayers.

Commissioners found those claims “speculative and unsupported,” adding that no evidence showed the solar projects would be wholly abandoned, and said Mackey-Taylor presented arguments on energy policy “that are outside the scope of this proceeding.”

The Iowa Office of Consumer Advocate and other groups intervened in the proceeding but did not oppose the waiver. MISO told regulators it supported NextEra’s request.

The commission concluded that the waiver is limited in scope, addresses a concrete problem and will not harm third parties.

NextEra is simultaneously working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reinstate the plant’s operating license, a process that includes safety reviews, environmental assessments and public engagement.

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NextEra CEO: Duane Arnold plant is “unicorn-type’ opportunity

John Ketchum, NextEra chairman, president and CEO, during a July 23 earnings conference call, said the company is making steady progress toward restarting Iowa’s Duane Arnold nuclear plant, describing it as a rare chance to add nuclear capacity without the high costs of new construction.

“There’s only three of them in the country … these are really unicorn-type opportunities,” Ketchum said, referring to Duane Arnold and two other nuclear plants under consideration for recommissioning. “We continue to advance Duane. I’m very pleased with the way things are going on the on-site reviews and some of the engineering analysis that we’ve done.”

The company is also in talks with potential customers, including data centers, that could benefit from the plant’s reliable baseload power if operations resume, Ketchum said. He compared Duane Arnold’s potential to projects in Wisconsin that have drawn major technology companies.

Ketchum emphasized that NextEra is pursuing an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy, with development efforts in natural gas, small modular reactors, and other technologies.

“Our goal is to provide the customer with what it wants when it needs it, at the right price, to help address the power demand that we see in this country,” he said.

Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com