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3-MO 3.83% +1bp 6-MO 3.98% unch 1-YR 4.08% +4bp 2-YR 4.28% +5bp 3-YR 4.34% +4bp 5-YR 4.45% +7bp 7-YR 4.59% +7bp 10-YR 4.75% +7bp 20-YR 5.28% +6bp 30-YR 5.27% +6bp 3-MO 3.83% +1bp 6-MO 3.98% unch 1-YR 4.08% +4bp 2-YR 4.28% +5bp 3-YR 4.34% +4bp 5-YR 4.45% +7bp 7-YR 4.59% +7bp 10-YR 4.75% +7bp 20-YR 5.28% +6bp 30-YR 5.27% +6bp 3-MO 3.83% +1bp 6-MO 3.98% unch 1-YR 4.08% +4bp 2-YR 4.28% +5bp 3-YR 4.34% +4bp 5-YR 4.45% +7bp 7-YR 4.59% +7bp 10-YR 4.75% +7bp 20-YR 5.28% +6bp 30-YR 5.27% +6bp 3-MO 3.83% +1bp 6-MO 3.98% unch 1-YR 4.08% +4bp 2-YR 4.28% +5bp 3-YR 4.34% +4bp 5-YR 4.45% +7bp 7-YR 4.59% +7bp 10-YR 4.75% +7bp 20-YR 5.28% +6bp 30-YR 5.27% +6bp 3-MO 3.83% +1bp 6-MO 3.98% unch 1-YR 4.08% +4bp 2-YR 4.28% +5bp 3-YR 4.34% +4bp 5-YR 4.45% +7bp 7-YR 4.59% +7bp 10-YR 4.75% +7bp 20-YR 5.28% +6bp 30-YR 5.27% +6bp 3-MO 3.83% +1bp 6-MO 3.98% unch 1-YR 4.08% +4bp 2-YR 4.28% +5bp 3-YR 4.34% +4bp 5-YR 4.45% +7bp 7-YR 4.59% +7bp 10-YR 4.75% +7bp 20-YR 5.28% +6bp 30-YR 5.27% +6bp
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Docket 50-331

NRC staff has made a preliminary finding that restarting a reactor shut since 2020 needs no environmental impact statement, and the notice names Google as the reason it is being restarted

Money & World
The Editorial Team ·
A close photograph of a wall of square glass blocks laid in four courses and filling the frame. Each block is moulded with a rippled interior that scatters light into pale blue and white streaks against a near black ground, and narrow weathered mortar joints run between them. No text, markings, brand marks, people or machinery are in view. A generic architectural glass close-up, not a photograph of any power station, reactor or plant site.
Photo: Chris F / Pexels

Iowa's only nuclear reactor stopped in October 2020, and the paperwork that stopped it was final in a specific way: once NextEra Energy Duane Arnold certified that it had permanently ceased operations and permanently removed the fuel, the plant's licence no longer authorised running a reactor at all.

Undoing that is the subject of a notice the Nuclear Regulatory Commission filed for public inspection on Friday morning. The staff has prepared a draft environmental assessment and a draft finding of no significant impact on reauthorising power operations at the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Linn County, and its preliminary determination is that no environmental impact statement is needed. Comments close 30 days after publication, which is set for 3 August.

The reactor first came online under a licence issued in February 1974. The licence term still runs to 21 February 2034, and that date, rather than any new one, is what NextEra is asking to operate through.

What is actually in front of the agency

Four requests, and they are not all the same kind of thing.

NextEra has filed one exemption request and three licence amendment requests. The NRC published a notice of opportunity to request a hearing and to petition for leave to intervene on the three amendments on 22 April. It published no such notice for the exemption, and the document says that follows from the Atomic Energy Act and the Commission's own regulations.

The finding

The staff assessed thirteen resource areas, from surface water to postulated accidents, and marked every one of them not significant.

The alternatives passage is the one worth reading twice. Staff concluded there are no alternatives that meet the need for the proposed actions, and that the no-action alternative, meaning leaving the reactor shut, could potentially be significant in its environmental impacts, against not significant for the restart. On that basis it found no environmentally preferable alternative to restarting.

The two names

The notice states the need for the federal action as 610 megawatts-electric of baseload capability. It also states why the applicant wants it: NextEra cites a 25-year power purchase agreement signed in 2025 with Google, supplying carbon-free energy to Google's cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure in Iowa.

The Department of Energy Office of Energy Dominance Financing is listed as a cooperating agency on the draft assessment.

No restart date appears anywhere in the document. Neither does a cost, a contract value, or a quantity of power.

The document: Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Docket No. 50-331, EAXX-429-00-000-1778044870, NRC-2026-1719, NextEra Energy Duane Arnold, LLC; Duane Arnold Energy Center; Draft Environmental Assessment and Draft Finding of No Significant Impact. Notice; request for comment. FR Doc. 2026-15629, filed for public inspection at 08:45 on 31 July 2026, publication date 3 August 2026, signed by Stephen Koenick, Chief, License Renewal Environmental Branch, Division of Licensing Projects II, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, dated 28 July 2026. The raw text of the notice was fetched from federalregister.gov and read in full here; no fetch-tool summary was relied on, and every figure, date and name below was matched against that text. Verified in the notice: DAEC consists of a single boiling water nuclear reactor located in Linn County, Iowa; it was originally licensed for operation on 22 February 1974; the NRC issued a renewed facility license on 10 December 2010 with the license term expiring 21 February 2034; on 27 August 2020 and 12 October 2020 NextEra Energy Duane Arnold, LLC submitted certifications that it had permanently ceased operations and had permanently removed fuel from the reactor vessel under 10 CFR 50.82(a)(1); upon docketing of those certifications the renewed facility license no longer authorized operation of the reactor or emplacement or retention of fuel in the reactor vessel under 10 CFR 50.82(a)(2); NEDA is seeking to return DAEC to power operations and has submitted for NRC approval an exemption request and three license amendment requests in support of allowing resumption of power operations through 21 February 2034; a notice of opportunity to request a hearing and petition for leave to intervene on the three license amendment requests was published on 22 April 2026 at 91 FR 21514; and the NRC did not publish a notice of opportunity for hearing on the exemption request, which the notice states is consistent with the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 as amended and the NRC's regulations. Verified on the environmental finding: the NRC staff has prepared a draft EA and draft FONSI and has made the preliminary determination that the proposed actions will not have a significant effect on the quality of the human environment, that it will not prepare an environmental impact statement, and that a FONSI is warranted; the staff determined that environmental impacts would be NOT SIGNIFICANT for each potentially affected resource area, those areas being land use and visual resources, meteorology, air quality and noise, surface water resources, groundwater resources, ecological resources terrestrial and aquatic, Federally protected ecological resources, historic and cultural resources, socioeconomic conditions, radiological and nonradiological human health, waste management, uranium fuel cycle and transportation, and postulated accidents; the staff also considered decommissioning impacts, greenhouse gas emissions and climate change effects, and determined that projected effects of climate change would not alter any impact determination. Verified on alternatives, and the wording is unusual enough to be quoted rather than paraphrased: the staff determined that there are no alternatives that meet the need for the proposed actions, and that for the no-action alternative the environmental impacts could potentially be SIGNIFICANT, against NOT SIGNIFICANT for the proposed actions, so the staff concluded that there are no environmentally preferrable alternatives. Verified on need and on Google: the need for the proposed actions is stated as providing 610 megawatts-electric of baseload power generation capability through 21 February 2034, and the notice states that in support of its decision to pursue the resumption of power operations at DAEC, NEDA cites a 25-year power purchase agreement signed in 2025 with Google to supply carbon-free energy from DAEC to Google's cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure in Iowa. Verified on the cooperating agency: the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Dominance Financing is a cooperating agency on the draft EA. Verified on process: comments are due 30 days after publication in the Federal Register, comments may be emailed to DAECRestartEnvironmental@nrc.gov or filed at regulations.gov under Docket ID NRC-2026-1719, a copy of the draft EA and draft FONSI is available for public review at the Hiawatha Public Library, 150 West Willman Street, Hiawatha, Iowa 52233, the draft EA and draft FONSI are dated 27 July 2026 at ADAMS accession number ML26159A001, and the NRC used its NEPA process under 36 CFR 800.8(c) to fulfil its Section 106 National Historic Preservation Act obligations in lieu of the procedures at 36 CFR 800.3 through 800.6. The notice states no restart date, no capital cost, no headcount, no contract value, no volume of energy under the Google agreement, and no ownership percentages, and none of those is asserted below. The notice contains no allegation of conduct against any party..

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