Constellation Energy was issued a conditional loan by the Department of Energy of up to $5 billion dollars to increase its operating reactor fleet capacity by 1,100 megawatts.
Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and DOE’s Energy Dominance Financing Director Gregory Beard made the announcement at Constellation’s Byron Clean Energy Center in Ogle County, Ill. Tuesday afternoon.
Constellation intends to use these investments to provide uprates at its Braidwood, Byron, Clinton, Dresden, LaSalle and Quad Cities nuclear plants in Illinois. These Illinois nuclear power plants collectively produce nearly 12,000 megawatts of electricity.
The company will also increase the generating capacities at the Calvert Cliffs plant in Maryland, which generates 1,790 megawatts, and Limerick plant in Pennsylvania, which generates 2,317 megawatts.
Constellation said in its press release that DOE’s commitment builds on the private funding supporting the company’s uprate plans. The company has signed several deals with Google, Amazon and Meta to invest over $7 billion dollars to add over 1,100 megawatts to its current fleet through power output increases.
Constellation owns and operates the largest domestic nuclear fleet in 21 reactors across 12 sites.
“This is how America wins the race for energy abundance – by pairing private-sector demand and investment with smart federal financing to unlock more power from the nuclear plants we already have,” Joe Dominguez, Constellation chairman, president and CEO, said in the release. “Our agreements with Google and Amazon demonstrate how long-term customer commitments can incentivize billions of dollars in investment in new, reliable nuclear capacity.”
With the loan being conditional, Constellation is required to hit several conditions, such as financial, environmental and technical, before entering into a definitive agreement with DOE for the loan. This conditional loan was provided under DOE’s Utility Power Reactor Incremental Scaling Effort program, which was launched in March.
The program is aimed to bring additional power to the grid at existing plants through uprates. Earlier this month, DOE issued a $4.2 billion conditional loan to Vistra Corp to bring new 433 megawatts to the PJM region, which serves parts of 13 states and Washington, D.C.
DOE also issued a $26.5 billion loan to Southern Company in February to add over 300 megawatts to its Plant Vogtle units in Georgia. The multi-billion dollar loan will also provide upgrades to other energy infrastructures under the utility holding company’s subsidiaries.
The Constellation loan helps bring the federal uprate program close to its 2029 goal of bringing 5,000 megawatts onto the electric grid, DOE said. According to DOE’s fact sheet, the program identified nearly 4,700 megawatts of additional nuclear capacity or – 95% – towards the goal.
The fact sheet included Duane Arnold, Palisades and the former Three Mile Island plants as a part of the added capacity to come online soon. The three proposed restart plants, if completed, would bring around 2,000 megawatts back to the grid.
