Palisades Power Plant stopped generating electricity in May 2022. Its fuel was removed, and the nuclear plant beside Lake Michigan was being prepared for dismantling. Four years later, its new owner, Holtec, is working to bring it back. At full power, the plant could supply roughly 800 megawatts—enough for about 800,000 Michigan homes, Holtec estimates.

The customers waiting for that power are member-owned utilities serving Michigan and Indiana. Elsewhere, a different set of buyers has arrived: Microsoft has signed up for electricity from Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, and Google is backing a closed plant in Iowa. Power plants built decades ago have become attractive to companies racing to build the next generation of computing.

The owners are betting that repairing a plant will cost less and take less time than building one. Palisades already has a reactor, turbines and a connection to the grid. Bringing those pieces back into service, however, has meant years of work.

Palisades closed as its long-term electricity contract expired. Holtec initially intended to dismantle it, then pursued a restart. The utilities buying its future output have committed for an initial 28 years. The plant still has to work again.

Hot water from the reactor flows through tubes in the steam generators, heating the separate water around them until it turns to steam. The steam turns a turbine connected to an electrical generator. The tube wall transfers heat while keeping the two water circuits apart, containing radioactive reactor water on its side of the barrier.

Inspections found cracking that required attention before restart. One repair inserts a metal sleeve inside an affected tube, spanning the damaged area while leaving a passage for water. The federal nuclear regulator approved the sleeving amendment in 2025; the repaired equipment remains subject to inspection.

People had to be brought back too. Parts of the control-room simulator had been repurposed; restoring it let operators train for the return. Emergency arrangements and operating requirements also had to be reinstated. Usable equipment alone does not make an operating plant.

Fuel is another delicate job. A fuel assembly is a bundle of long metal rods containing uranium pellets. During refueling, a handling machine lowers these bundles into the open reactor vessel under water.

Loading began at Palisades on August 30. Holtec's September 21 report says one assembly tilted after placement and release of the handling tool, prompting a pause. Engineers were developing retrieval equipment and preparing a request for regulatory approval. The cause was under investigation, and no date was given for resuming loading.

Microsoft and Google are making commitments long enough to give other plant owners a reason to take on that work.

At Three Mile Island, the project concerns Unit 1, which operated until economic pressures closed it in 2019. It is separate from Unit 2, the reactor damaged in the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. Microsoft's 20-year agreement supports bringing Unit 1 back, with Constellation targeting 2027.

The reactor would supply the same regional grid that serves homes, factories and other businesses. Microsoft buys its output to help match the electricity its data centers consume, but the power does not travel down a private wire to Microsoft's servers. The data centers draw from the grid through their own connections.

In Iowa, Google has made a 25-year commitment to the Duane Arnold plant, which closed in 2020. Its power would support Google's cloud and AI operations in the state, with a local power cooperative buying the remainder. NextEra Energy aims to resume operations by the first quarter of 2029, subject to approvals.

A long-term buyer helps pay for the restart. The reopened plant adds electricity to the shared grid, but high-voltage power lines still need room to carry it to the places using more power.

A restart can reuse the reactor vessel, heavy concrete structures and much of the machinery. At Three Mile Island, the announced investment is roughly $1.6 billion to restore 835 megawatts. Georgia's two new Vogtle reactors added 2,228 megawatts at a reported project cost above $30 billion, after an eleven-year expansion.

Vogtle had major overruns, and the restart figure is still an estimate. Even allowing for those differences, the potential saving gives owners a reason to inspect an old plant before replacing it. Long purchase contracts and federal loans help fund the work.

The next potential projects are less settled. Indian Point in New York attracts calls to reopen, but Holtec reported no restart plans to state officials in February 2026.

In South Carolina, a developer is studying whether to finish two reactors abandoned during construction. The investment decision is targeted for early 2028. Neither reactor ever operated, so this would mean completing a construction project.

At a retired Nebraska plant, crews cut apart and removed the reactor vessel in 2023. In Wisconsin, the closed Kewaunee plant is being studied as a site for new reactors. That would mean building new reactors on the property, rather than restarting the original one.

The three announced restarts would recover about 2.25 gigawatts, roughly as much generating capacity as Vogtle's two new reactors. At an assumed 90% of full-year output, they would produce about 18 billion kilowatt-hours annually. That is around 4% of the increase in U.S. data-center electricity use between 2024 and 2030 in Berkeley Lab's central projection. Some of that reactor output is already committed to other customers.

Supplying that entire increase with nuclear would take roughly 26 expansions like Vogtle's, or 52 new reactors of that size. Other energy sources can supply much of the demand. But if nuclear is going to provide a large share of the data-center boom, America will have to build new reactors alongside these restarts.

Anthony

The Luniter Observatory

Research and educational analysis only — not financial advice. Every investment carries risk.