Meta is set to become the largest consumer of nuclear power in the U.S. Shares of suppliers soared

Meta Platforms announced that it has entered into 20-year agreements to purchase electricity from three energy companies: Oklo, Vistra and TerraPower, a company funded by Bill Gates. Shares of the first two companies soared 18% and 13%, respectively, on the premarket on January 9.

The projects in question will make Facebook's parent company a key consumer of new and existing nuclear power plants in the United States, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) writes. The company needs volumes of electricity comparable to the needs of an entire city for its artificial intelligence data centers, the publication points out.

Financial details of the deals Meta struck were not disclosed, but the arrangements are among the most ambitious and ambitious to date between technology companies and nuclear energy suppliers, the WSJ notes.

Under them, Meta will purchase power from the existing Vistra Perry and Davis-Besse power plants in Ohio, as well as the Beaver Valley power plant in Pennsylvania, according to a Vistra release. The deal will also help Meta finance the expansion of the Ohio power plants and extend their operating life, as the license to operate those plants runs through 2036 and the license for one of the two reactors at Beaver Valley runs through 2047, Reuters points out, noting that under the arrangements Meta will also help develop small modular reactors planned to be built by Oklo and TerraPower. So far, the agency points out, there are no commercial small modular reactors in the U.S. and permits would be required to build them.

These plans, along with Meta's agreement with Constellation last year, "will make Meta one of the largest corporate buyers of nuclear power in American history," Meta's head of international relations Joel Kaplan confirmed (quoted by Reuters).

The agreements, as indicated in the company, will allow to generate up to 6.6 gigawatts of nuclear power by 2035, which will exceed the total demand in the state of New Hampshire, notes CNBC. A typical nuclear power plant has a capacity of about 1 GW, notes Reuters. Meta expects to put into operation the first new reactors, the construction of which provide for the agreements, in 2030 and 2032. The purchase of nuclear power from Vistra will begin at the end of 2026, WSJ writes.

"This is an order for the real work of starting a megaproject," commented TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque on the Meta deal.

The boom in artificial intelligence has dramatically increased the projected demand for electricity, increasing the need for new power plants and spurring the tech industry's interest in nuclear power, The Wall Street Journal writes, noting that the market situation has sparked bigtechs' desire to create their own power plants. This is not the first such deal for Meta: last year, the company agreed to buy electricity generated by a nuclear power plant in Illinois as part of a deal with Constellation Energy.

Amazon has also invested in reactor development company X-energy, and Microsoft has entered into a 20-year power purchase agreement with Constellation to accelerate the restart of a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. Alphabet and NextEra Energy also entered into a partnership to restart the Iowa nuclear plant, which closed five years ago last fall.

And while the outlook for nuclear power has improved significantly recently - just a few years ago, Vistra expected three of its power plants to close - but even with today's rising electricity prices and increased federal support for nuclear power, CEO Jim Burke has observed that extending the life of Vistra's projects and modernizing them would not be possible without Meta's financial support, the WSJ writes.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor