NE Edge Millstone (Waterford) data center, Waterford, Connecticut

NE Edge's plan to build a 300 megawatt data center at the Millstone nuclear power station in Waterford, New London County, Connecticut, is effectively canceled: the developer never filed a building permit application, and its host fee agreement with the town has run out. First Selectman Rob Brule announced the termination on Facebook, saying the agreement expired "by its own terms" and that he would not support any future host fee agreements for data centers in Waterford. NE Edge CEO Thomas Quinn said the company still had a $3 billion financing commitment lined up and interest from potential customers, while Dominion Energy, which owns Millstone, said it has "no current plans to develop a data center" there.

Waterford's Representative Town Meeting and Board of Selectmen unanimously approved the host agreement in March 2023, promising the town $231 million over 30 years in place of property taxes that Connecticut's 2021 data center incentive law waives; it covered two two-story buildings and a switchyard on about 55 acres of the 526-acre Millstone site, buying power directly from Dominion's reactors. Residents objected from the start over noise, traffic, fire risk, flooding and the power the campus would draw, forming Concerned Citizens of Waterford, later Concerned Citizens of Waterford and East Lyme. The group's founder, Bryan Sayles, found in grid operator ISO New England's records that both Millstone reactors had been offline for five weeks, which he said undercut NE Edge's argument that a direct reactor connection meant it needed no backup generators.

The Connecticut Siting Council, whose approval Dominion needed to supply the data center directly from the reactors, rejected the request without prejudice in January 2024, and Dominion never refiled. The council's executive director, Melanie Bachman, called it "premature" to review the plan given "the lack of information surrounding the proposed data centers and their direct interconnection to Millstone Power Station Units 2 and 3."

NE Edge has also pursued data center sites elsewhere in Connecticut, including in Killingly, where the town approved selling it land in August 2023, and Quinn said the company intends to keep developing in the state. For the Millstone site to return, a new developer would need a host fee agreement from Waterford, which Brule has said he will not support, and Dominion would have to seek Siting Council approval again.