Google's '3.6 Gigawatt Nuclear Deal' Is 890 Megawatts of New Power and a Very Large Rounding Habit
The Constellation agreement is real, big, and mostly about squeezing more output from reactors that already exist — which is less cinematic than the headline suggested.
On Tuesday, Google and Constellation Energy announced a package of power agreements totaling 3,590 megawatts, which headlines promptly rounded to “3.6 GW” and, in several cases, to “nuclear deal.” Both are accurate in the way that “I ran a marathon” is accurate if you drove the first 20 miles.
Here is the actual structure, per reporting from Reuters (via TimesLive), BIC Magazine and Let’s Data Science. About 890 megawatts of the total is new capacity: a 20-year power purchase agreement covering uprates at 11 Constellation nuclear units across six sites in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. An uprate is exactly what it sounds like: new turbines, steam generators and digital controls at a plant that already runs, so it squeezes more electricity out of the same reactor. The first uprate is expected online in 2028, and Constellation says it will invest more than $4.3 billion.
The other 2,700 megawatts is a separate 15-year supply agreement. Let’s Data Science describes it as covering reactors already operating, and BIC Magazine as existing generation in PJM, the largest U.S. grid. TimesLive’s account says it is tied to no particular generation source, which Google says gives Constellation’s operating plants long-term revenue certainty. In other words, roughly three-quarters of the “3.6 GW” is Google agreeing to buy electricity that already exists, from plants already running. This is a legitimate and useful commercial arrangement. It is also, as a construction project, a subscription.
None of this is a complaint. Uprates are a genuinely efficient way to add power: you’re not permitting a new site, you’re not digging a new hole, and you’re not waiting for a new reactor to cool down, metaphorically or otherwise. Google’s Amanda Peterson Corio said the agreement to fund reactor uprates “will strengthen the PJM grid,” and Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez called preserving and expanding the output of the existing fleet critical to meeting the country’s growing energy needs. As corporate quotes go, these are almost refreshingly specific.
The grid backdrop is worth knowing. TimesLive reports the deal comes as PJM has proposed a “bring your own power” approach for data-center customers. And according to Let’s Data Science, PJM came up 6,831 megawatts short of its reliability requirement for the delivery year starting June 2028, the same year the first uprate is expected to deliver. We’re keeping this section factual; the grid operator’s math is not ours to joke about.
There was also, in the fine print, a second deal: Constellation selected Google Cloud and Gemini Enterprise under an expanded five-year technology alliance for its own operations, which BIC describes as an “AI for energy” blueprint. The price wasn’t disclosed, though Bloomberg reported it at more than $1 billion, per Let’s Data Science. So Constellation will supply power to the data centers that run Google’s AI, and Google will supply its AI to the company that supplies the power. It’s a closed loop, the corporate equivalent of two people paying each other’s restaurant bills and calling it a partnership.
Big-tech nuclear announcements are by now a genre, and each is billed as a landmark. The technology industry has discovered that the clean, firm, round-the-clock electricity it wants is already available in the form of nuclear plants, and the main thing you can do with them is sign up for their output.
Which is the real lesson here. The near-term answer to AI’s power appetite turns out to be incrementalism: make existing machines slightly better, sign a very long contract, and issue a press release with a number that includes the part that was already there. The company that needs the power is happy. The company that supplies it is happy. Everyone has been correctly compensated.
The only entity absent from the happy ending is the person who read “3.6 gigawatts of nuclear” and imagined three reactors spinning up in a field. Sorry. The field is fine. The reactors were already there, and now they will be a little bit more productive, starting in 2028.
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