Google and Constellation Energy announced on October 6, 2026, a twenty-year power purchase agreement to add 890 megawatts of new nuclear capacity to the PJM Interconnection grid, the largest electricity network in the United States. Constellation’s planned investment exceeds $4.3 billion and involves 11 nuclear units already in operation across Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
The strategy does not involve building new plants. Instead, both partners are betting on uprates — the modernization of existing reactors to extract more output without increasing their number. The work will cover turbines, steam generators, and digital control systems, improving the thermal and electrical efficiency of six nuclear sites. The first additional megawatts are expected online by 2028. Constellation estimates the project will preserve around 4,400 existing jobs and create approximately 7,200 new ones during the construction phase.
The deal is actually structured as two separate contracts. The first, a twenty-year agreement, funds the uprates and secures the 890 MW of new generation. The second is a fifteen-year supply agreement covering an additional 2,700 MW from Constellation’s existing fleet within PJM, bringing Google’s total supply to approximately 3,590 MW — roughly equivalent to the output of three or four large conventional nuclear plants. Constellation’s stock surged more than 12% in the session following the announcement.
Context matters here. The PJM grid serves around 67 million people across 13 states, and electricity demand in that region is rising due to a combination of reindustrialization, industrial electrification, and — above all — the rapid expansion of AI-powered data centers. Google has previously signed agreements to restart nuclear facilities, including a NextEra Energy plant in Iowa, and this deal fits into a broader trend of major U.S. tech companies locking in long-term contracts directly with clean, reliable power providers. Just the previous week, Constellation had signed a similar twenty-year PPA with Amazon for 190 MW of additional capacity from the Calvert Cliffs plant in Maryland. Combined, the two deals support nearly 1.1 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity within just a few days.
For the industry, the significance of this deal extends well beyond the raw numbers. Uprates demonstrate that the existing U.S. nuclear fleet still has meaningful room to grow — without waiting for the lengthy timelines required to build new reactors from scratch. If this model takes hold — long-term agreements between nuclear utilities and large industrial consumers — it could become the standard mechanism through which American nuclear power expands in the years ahead, complementing the new SMRs still under development.
