Vistra’s planned investments at Beaver Valley in Pennsylvania and Davis-Besse and Perry in Ohio will produce more electricity from existing nuclear plants without requiring new transmission corridors or equivalent new generation resources, while supporting the plants’ operation for an additional 20 years beyond their existing licences, the Department of Energy (DOE) said.
The projects will preserve nearly 4 GW of reliable baseload power and add 433 MW of new nuclear capacity, DOE added, helping meet growing electricity demand in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and across the 13-state PJM Interconnection region. The investments will support about 3,000 project-related jobs in engineering, construction, and planned outage work while preserving thousands of permanent, well-paying jobs.
DOE’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing’s conditional loan commitment also includes an option to finance potential future uprates at Vistra’s Comanche Peak nuclear power plant in Texas.
It said the investment advances President Donald Trump’s Executive Order Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base, and “marks another major step in restoring American nuclear leadership”.
DOE noted that, while this conditional commitment indicates its intent to provide a loan, Vistra must satisfy certain technical, legal, environmental, and financial conditions before the DOE enters into definitive financing documents and funds the loan.
“President Trump promised to unleash an American nuclear renaissance, and the Energy Department is delivering,” said US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. “By getting more power out of the nuclear plants we already have, we can deliver more affordable, reliable, around the-clock energy for American families and businesses.”
DOE’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing Director Gregory Beard said it was “financing the projects that advance that mission. These investments will extend the life of existing reactors, increase nuclear generation, and deliver abundant, around-the-clock power to lower costs and power American prosperity for decades to come”.
In February, Vistra President and CEO Jim Burke said landmark power purchase agreements (PPAs) with companies including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Meta were supporting the company’s plans to relicense and uprate its nuclear plants – but the focus on uprates is likely to come after 2028. AWS has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Vistra for up to 1,200 MW of power from Comanche Peak plant, while Meta has signed 20-year PPAs covering 2,176 MW of nuclear energy and capacity from the Perry and Davis-Besse plants in Ohio; plus the purchase of energy from uprates at those two plants and the Beaver Valley plant in Pennsylvania.
At the time, Burke said the company still sees an opportunity to contract up to an additional 3.2 GW of nuclear capacity across its Beaver Valley and Comanche Peak sites, including potential upgrades of approximately 200 MW at Comanche Peak, whose operating licences were extend in 2024 for an additional 20 years.
