Meta Platforms announced this Friday that it signed 20-year agreements to purchase power from three Vistra nuclear plants in the heart of the United States and develop projects with two companies seeking to build small modular reactors.
Oklo shares rose nearly 20%, while Vistra shares rose about 8% in pre-market trading.
Meta and other big tech companies are looking to secure long-term electricity supplies as artificial intelligence and data centers increase energy demand in the United States for the first time in two decades.
The company announced in a blog that it will purchase power from Vistra’s Perry and Davis-Besse plants in Ohio and the Beaver Valley plant in Pennsylvania.
Meta said the deal will help finance the expansion and extend the life of the Ohio plants, whose licenses are valid until at least 2036, and one of the two Beaver Valley reactors is licensed until 2047.
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Meta will also help develop small modular reactors planned by Oklo and TerraPower, the latter backed by billionaire Bill Gates.
Supporters of SMRs say these reactors will one day save costs because they can be built in factories rather than on-site. Critics say they will struggle to achieve economies of scale similar to those of today’s large reactors. There are still no SMRs in commercial operation in the US and the plants will require permits.
Joel Kaplan, Meta’s global affairs director, said the plans, along with last year’s deal with Constellation to keep a reactor in Illinois operating for 20 years, “will make Meta one of the largest corporate buyers of nuclear power in U.S. history.”
The deals will provide up to 6.6 gigawatts of nuclear power by 2035, according to Meta. The size of a typical nuclear power plant is approximately 1 GW. In 2024, Meta sought interest from nuclear power developers to acquire 1 to 4 gigawatts of nuclear power.
Meta will help fund the development of two TerraPower reactors to generate up to 690 megawatts of power starting in 2032. The deal also gives Meta rights to power from up to six more TerraPower reactors by 2035. TerraPower President and CEO Chris Levesque said the deal will support the rapid deployment of reactors.
Meta said its partnership with Oklo will help develop up to 1.2 GW of power in Ohio starting in 2030. The support will facilitate early acquisition and development, says Jacob DeWitte, co-founder and CEO of Oklo.
With information from Reuters
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