Once on the verge of retirement, an announcement by Meta Platforms,Inc., the parent company of Face-book, has provided new life for Ohio’st wo existing nuclear power plants.

On Jan. 9, Meta announced that it struck 20-year agreements to buy power from three Vistra nuclear plants – Davis-Besse and Perry Nuclear in Ohio and Beaver Valley plant in Pennsylvania. According to Reuters, Meta said the deal will help finance expansion at the Ohio plants and lengthen the lifespan of both facilities, which are licensed to run through at least 2036.

Additionally, Meta announced a deal with Oklo Inc., an advanced nuclear technology company, to develop a 1.2 GW power campus in Piketon at the site of the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which was formerly owned by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The deals will likely create thousands of good-paying jobs for members of the Ohio building trades.

Joel Kaplan, Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer, said the agreements with Vistra, along with a different agreement to keep an Illinois reactor operating for 20 years, will, “make Meta one of the most significant corporate purchasers of nuclear energy in American history.” Under terms of the agreements, the plants will generate up to 6.6 gigawatts of nuclear power by 2035, enough to power 5 million homes, Meta said. A typical nuclear power plant produces about 1 GW.

Through the agreements, Meta is purchasing 2,176 MW of nuclear energy and capacity from Ohio’s Perry and Davis-Besse plants. It is also purchasing 433 MW of incremental nuclear energy and capacity from equipment upgrades to increase generation output (called uprates) at

Perry, Davis-Besse and Beaver Valley.

More than 15 percent of the contracted capacity announced will be new capacity. Also, the electricity generated at the plants will continue to go to the grid for all electricity users.

“This is a unique and exciting collaboration, and Vistra is proud to partner with Meta on these long-term power purchase agreements, which ensure the continued safe and reliable operation of Vistra’s Beaver Valley, Davis-Besse, and Perry nuclear power plants for decades to come while providing a competitive solution for our customer to support its sustainable operations,” said Jim Burke, president and CEO of Vistra. “Importantly, this commitment from Meta provides Vistra the certainty needed to invest in these plants and communities and bring new nuclear generation online for the grid – through uprates at our existing plants.”

The Perry Nuclear Power Plant is located within the IBEW Local 673 jurisdiction in northeast Ohio. Local 673 Business Manager John Rusnak said the announcement makes sense. He described Perry as a “sleeping giant.”

“With all new datacenters in Ohio, this was a no-brainer to supply them with clean, reliable power,” he said.

The plans by Meta and Vistra will be significant for Rusnak’s members.

“It’s not only impactful for our Local Union, but for our apprenticeship program and organizing,” he said. “This is a huge benefit for our members, the local communities and the local schools.”

While he does not expect any immediate changes in workload, the announcement will make an impact on future outages and general maintenance. Depending on the work performed during an outage at Perry, Local 673 will supply their signatory contractors with anywhere from 80 to 120 members.

For instance, he is already anticipating a longer-than-normal outage in the spring of 2027 due to the specific maintenance that will need to be performed.

Outages at Perry not only provide jobs for IBEW members. They also create jobs for members of other building trades Local Unions affiliated with the Cleveland Building and Construction Trades Council. Besides outages, there are currently six IBEW members working full-time at the plant. Once upgrades are completed, the number of members working full-time at Perry will increase, Rusnak said.

The upgrades at all three Vistra plants will create about 3,000 jobs over nine years for engineering, construction and maintenance work during planned outages, The Plain Dealer reported.

Meanwhile, in southern Ohio, Meta intends to prepay for power and provide funding to advance project certainty for Oklo.

The proposed fission powerhouses are designed to produce up to 75MW using a maximum use of uranium fuel. This feature enables the powerhouse to operate for up to 10 years before refueling and allows Oklo’s plants to run on recycled used nuclear fuel from other nuclear power plants.

Through its website, Oklo said it will use the funds to secure nuclear fuel and advance Phase 1 of the project – supporting the development of clean, reliable power in Pike County that can scale up to 1.2 GW.

The land purchase in Pike County was facilitated in part by the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative (SODI), a nonprofit working to transform thousands of acres at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant into a hub for advanced manufacturing and clean energy.

According to Oklo’s website, the agreement will create thousands of construction and long-term operations jobs, expanding Ohio’s clean energy workforce and generating new local and state tax revenues.

Pre-construction and site preparation are slated to begin this year, with the first phase targeted to come online as early as 2030. The plans for the scalable powerhouse facility are expected to expand incrementally to deliver up to the full target of 1.2 GW by 2034.

Meta invests in Ohio’s nuclear plants: Oklo to build new fission plants in Piketon