The Trump administration plans to offer Vistra Corp. a loan package of roughly $4 billion to upgrade three of its nuclear plants, according to people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported on Friday.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright is expected to announce the funding as soon as Monday during a planned visit to the Perry nuclear complex northeast of Cleveland. The package would pay for investments at Vistra’s two plants in Ohio and another in Pennsylvania, said the people, who were not authorized to speak on the record. The size of the expansions Vistra plans was not immediately known.
The offer fits a growing problem: electricity demand is expanding fast, driven by power-hungry data centers whose operators want round-the-clock energy. President Trump has set a goal of quadrupling U.S. nuclear capacity by 2050, and because permitting and building new reactors takes years and costs billions, upgrading existing plants is one of the few ways to add capacity relatively quickly. The strain on the grid has already reached Congress, where the Senate this week blocked a bill to make data centers pay for grid costs.
Vistra supplies power to the biggest U.S. grid, operated by PJM Interconnection, which stretches from Illinois to Washington, D.C., and serves about 67 million people. PJM is struggling to meet surging demand from data centers.
The White House sees expanded nuclear plants as a primary means to power the data centers, and as a cheap source of electricity to support economic growth and domestic manufacturing.
Both the Energy Department and Vistra did not immediately return messages seeking comment, Bloomberg said.