Google to pay for nuclear uprates at Georgia Power plants

Utility-scale opposition to AI data centers has been building across the country, with residents lobbying local officials to cancel projects over concerns about higher utility bills and pollution. That pushback has already delayed or disrupted tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of AI infrastructure, prompting companies to add power generation to their proposals. With the Trump Administration openly opposed to solar and wind development, nuclear has re-entered the mix.

Nuclear power was originally cheap to produce once a plant was built, but technological advances drove down the cost of natural gas, solar, and wind. By 2018, a local Iowa utility paid a $110 million fee to break a five-year contract with a nuclear plant and switch to cheaper wind and natural gas. Now, rising U.S. electricity demand is expected to make nuclear competitive again — but only at existing plants, since new reactors remain prohibitively expensive. That is the logic behind Google's agreement with Georgia Power, which follows NextEra Energy's $1.9 billion government loan guarantee to restart a shuttered Iowa nuclear plant for a Google AI data center.