Vistra In Line For $4 Billion Nuclear Loan As Washington’s Lending Spree Continues

The Trump administration plans to offer Vistra roughly $4 billion in loans to uprate an additional 433 MW from its Perry and Davis-Besse plants in Ohio and Beaver Valley in Pennsylvania, Bloomberg reported Friday. Energy Secretary Chris Wright could announce the package Monday during a visit to the Perry plant. 

Earlier this year, Meta signed a deal with Vistra for electricity from the same three power plants. The 20-year power purchase agreements (PPAs) cover 2,176 MW of existing generation and another 433 MW from planned uprates across those three plants. 

None of this should surprise anyone who remembers Wright’s promise that nuclear would receive the biggest share of the DOE loan office’s financing.

“By far the biggest use of those dollars will be for nuclear power plants,” he said last November. DOE reported that their Energy Dominance Financing (EDF) office had over $250 billion in available lending authority in July.

The EDF (previously the Loan Program Office) is on the warpath to fulfill Wright’s prophecy, having already financed three reactor restarts so far: 

• $1.5 billion for Holtec’s Palisades
• $1 billion for Constellation’s Crane
• $1.9 billion for NextEra’s Duane Arnold

Then there’s Southern Company’s package of up to $26.5 billion. Southern’s loans went to multiple generation plants, including gas and hydro, but money also went to subsidiaries Georgia Power and Alabama Power for nuclear uprates and license renewals.

EDF also announced $17.5 billion in conditional commitments over the summer for long-lead equipment supporting ten AP1000s from Westinghouse.

Hundreds of billions of dollars are still anticipated to be utilized for achieving Trump's goal of quadrupling nuclear generation in the country by 2050.