OAK HARBOR, Ohio — The long-awaited ownership transfer of the Davis-Besse, Perry, and Beaver Valley nuclear power plants has been completed.
Irving, Texas-based Vistra announced the deal’s closing in a news release issued Friday, ending its yearlong process to acquire Energy Harbor and its nuclear assets for $3.4 billion. It began last March.
"Today's closing represents our commitment to leading a responsible transformation of the country's energy supply to greener energy sources through the expansion of our zero-carbon generation portfolio while continuing to prioritize reliable and affordable electricity for the customers we serve,” Jim Burke, Vistra president and chief executive officer, stated in the news release. “We now own the second-largest competitive nuclear fleet in the U.S., complementing our existing reliable, flexible, and dispatchable generation assets and our leading retail business.”
With the completed transaction, Vistra said it will bring its products and services to market in 20 states and the District of Columbia.
Its nuclear fleet will be managed by a newly formed subsidiary called Vistra Vision.
Davis-Besse and Perry are in Ohio, both along Lake Erie. Beaver Valley, a twin-reactor complex, is in western Pennsylvania.
Vistra owns the twin-unit Comanche Peak nuclear plant in Glen Rose, Texas, about 40 miles southwest of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. It is not buying Energy Harbor’s two coal-fired plants along the Ohio River.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s 2023 assessment letters were issued this week to each of the nation’s 93 nuclear plant operators. The NRC told Vistra, in a letter Wednesday, that inspection results showed Comanche Peak was in “the highest performance category of the NRC’s Reactor Oversight Process.”
First Published March 1, 2024, 9:55 p.m.
