DOE announces conditional loan commitment of up to $5 billion for Constellation

WASHINGTON, Oct 27 — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on Oct 27 announced a conditional loan commitment of up to $5 billion to finance nuclear uprates and modernization across Constellation Energy's nuclear fleet in Illinois, Maryland and Pennsylvania.

The modernization efforts will add nearly 1.1 gigawatts (GW) of electricity across the PJM Interconnection and Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) regions, according to the department's Office of Energy Dominance Financing (EDF), which issued the commitment.

DOE said the projects will add enough electricity to power more than 930,000 homes and will support more than 10,000 project-related jobs.

The planned investments cover the Braidwood, Byron, Clinton, Dresden, LaSalle and Quad Cities plants in Illinois, Calvert Cliffs in Maryland and Limerick in Pennsylvania, the department said. The commitment also includes an option to finance future uprate projects at additional Constellation facilities.

"Uprates that maximize power generation from our existing nuclear facilities are yet another example of the commonsense energy addition policies the Trump Administration is embracing," Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said.

DOE said the conditional commitment indicates its intent to provide a loan. Constellation must satisfy certain technical, legal, environmental and financial conditions before the department enters into definitive financing documents and funds the loan.

The loan advances an executive order, Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base, which calls for DOE to facilitate 5 GW of power uprates from existing nuclear reactors, the department said. In March 2026, DOE launched its Utility Power Reactor Incremental Scaling Effort (UPRISE) under that order.