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Meta announced<\/a> Tuesday morning that it was paying billions of dollars to keep an Illinois nuclear power plant running through 2047. The social media company will buy all the \u201cclean energy attributes\u201d of Constellation Energy\u2019s Clinton Clean Energy Center, a 1.1 gigawatt nuclear power plant in central Illinois, starting in June 2027.<\/p>\n Electricity will still flow to the local grid, so Meta\u2019s purchase won\u2019t directly power one of its data centers, though the company does have one about two hours north of Clinton in DeKalb. Rather, the deal is a bit of carbon accounting to lower the company\u2019s overall climate impact. It doesn\u2019t reduce emissions on the grid, but prevents them from potentially increasing.<\/p>\n Neither company disclosed exact financial terms, but the multi-billion-dollar deal will help Constellation relicense the plant and guarantee a customer for the duration of that license extension.<\/p>\n Big tech companies \u2014\u00a0Meta included\u00a0\u2014 have become vocal backers of the fission industry recently. Before the recent boom in data center construction, nuclear reactors had faced a grim future as cheap wind, solar, and natural gas undercut their power-generating costs. But the surge in AI and cloud computing has sent tech companies searching for power, which in turn has led to a string of investments<\/a> in nuclear startups.<\/p>\n Meta and Constellation have alluded to the deal as a way to save the nuclear power plant from shutdown, though neither said it was at imminent risk of closure. <\/p>\n The power provider initially planned to shut down the Clinton reactor in June 2017<\/a> as it faced stiff competition from cheap natural gas, but Illinois legislators stepped in with subsidies<\/a> that encouraged Constellation to keep the lights on. Those subsidies are set to expire in 2027, and Constellation says the Meta deal will help prevent the closure.<\/p>\n But since 2017, Constellation has not threatened to shut down the Clinton power plant. Instead, in 2022, the company said<\/a> it would apply to extend the reactor\u2019s operating license through 2047.<\/p>\n TechCrunch has asked Constellation about its plans for the Clinton power plant before the Meta deal materialized, and we\u2019ll update this article if we receive a reply. It\u2019s likely that the company would have turned to ratepayers, something Constellation hints at in today\u2019s press release<\/a>: The deal with Meta \u201cessentially replaces the ZEC [zero-emission credit] program and ensures long-term operations of the plant without ratepayer support.\u201d<\/p>\n Meta and its big tech peers have fallen head over heels for nuclear power lately. Meta itself announced earlier this year that it was soliciting proposals for new nuclear power plants<\/a> that would generate between 1\u20134 gigawatts of power. Today, the company said it has received over 50 qualified submissions for sites in more than 20 states.<\/p>\n With the Meta deal, Constellation has landed another big tech patron for its nuclear fleet. In September, the power provider said that it would restart a reactor<\/a> at Three Mile Island after Microsoft agreed to buy all the resulting power.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n