(Bloomberg) — Constellation Energy Corp. agreed to sell power from an operating Illinois nuclear plant to Meta Platforms Inc., a deal that could spur construction of a new reactor at the site as artificial intelligence sends power demand soaring.
The parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp signed a 20-year contract to buy the output from the Clinton plant starting in mid-2027, when a state subsidy expires, according to a statement Tuesday. Constellation, the biggest US nuclear operator, declined to provide financial details.
The agreement is the latest evidence of technology companies’ voracious appetite for energy to run data centers and AI. Nuclear energy is especially prized because it’s available around the clock and doesn’t emit planet-warming air pollution.
Under the deal, Constellation will invest in boosting Clinton’s output. The company is also considering plans to build another reactor at Clinton, which already has federal approval for a second unit.
“It’s a logical place for us to talk to Meta, and to others, about potentially building the next generation of assets,” Constellation Chief Executive Officer Joe Dominguez said in an interview. “Those conversations are well underway.”
Shares of Constellation surged as much as 16% in pre-market trading in New York while Meta was little changed.
Constellation said last year that it will invest $1.6 billion to revive its shuttered Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania and sell all the output to Microsoft Corp. While there’s also strong interest from technology companies in new reactors, power producers are wary of committing to a major nuclear investment after Southern Co. last year completed its Vogtle project in Georgia years behind schedule and more than double its budget.
A major tech company could provide the support that would prompt Constellation to move forward with a new reactor, Dominguez said, a decision that would be a significant advance for the industry. He’s evaluating a broad range of potential technologies for the site, from small reactors that are still under development to the big AP1000 design that Southern installed in Georgia.
The Meta deal marks a significant turnaround for the Clinton plant, which has about 1,100 megawatts of capacity — enough to power about 1 million homes. Then-owner Exelon Corp. had threatened to close the site in 2017 as nuclear operators around the US struggled to compete with cheap natural gas and renewables. The company changed course after Illinois approved a 10-year subsidy.
Constellation has other Illinois nuclear plants receiving state subsidies that are set to expire in the next several years, and Dominguez said he’s talking to multiple customers about additional deals similar to the Meta contract. He said there may be a completed agreement in the next six to 12 months.
The contract is Meta’s largest power deal to date, according to Urvi Parekh, the company’s global head of energy. The company is increasingly interested in nuclear to run its operations, and in December announced it was seeking proposals for as much as 4 gigawatts of new US reactors. So far it’s received about 50 proposals from a range of companies, including Constellation.
That initiative is aimed as bringing power onto the grid in the early 2030s, while the Clinton deal is seen as a near-term effort. With the subsidies set to expire, Meta and Constellation said they wanted to ensure the plant remained competitive.
“It was not clear who would buy electricity from this power plant,” Parekh said in an interview. “We want to make sure that this location continues to be a site where nuclear operates and it’s going to give Constellation the ability to start thinking creatively about how they could expand capacity here in the future.”
(Updates with share price move in sixth paragraph.)
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