Vistra is set to receive an approximately $4.2 billion loan from the Department of Energy to upgrade and uprate its nuclear reactors in Pennsylvania and Ohio, the DOE announced Monday, according to the American Nuclear Society. The work would add 433 MW of nuclear capacity for Pennsylvania, Ohio and the 13-state PJM region.
The DOE said the investment preserves 4 GW of existing baseload power and supports roughly 3,000 engineering, construction and planned outage jobs. The funding goes to three Vistra plants: Beaver Valley in Shippingport, Pa.; Davis-Besse in Oak Harbor, Ohio; and Perry in Perry, Ohio. Beaver Valley has two pressurized water reactors totaling 1,872 MWe. Davis-Besse is a single 908-MWe pressurized water reactor, and Perry is a single 1,268-MWe boiling water reactor.
According to the DOE, the planned investments will produce more electricity without new transmission corridors or new generation resources and will support operations for an additional 20 years beyond current licenses. Beaver Valley units 1 and 2 are licensed through 2036 and 2047, Davis-Besse through 2037 and Perry through 2046. Vistra notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in January that it intends to file subsequent license renewal applications for all three sites.
The loans come from the DOE's Office of Energy Dominance Financing, formerly the Loan Programs Office. The commitment is conditional on Vistra meeting technical, legal, environmental and financial requirements before a definitive agreement. It includes an option to finance future uprates at Comanche Peak in Glen Rose, Texas, a 2,400-MWe, two-unit plant.
NRC records list planned extended power uprate applications for Perry in 2029, Beaver Valley-2 in 2030, Beaver Valley-1 in 2031 and Davis-Besse in 2032. In January, Meta said it would support uprates at the three plants.
Source: American Nuclear Society - https://www.ans.org/news/2026-10-06/article-8464/vistra-gets-42b-doe-loan-for-planned-uprates-in-ohio-pennsylvania/