HYPERSCALER NUCLEAR PPA ECONOMICS

Aug 19, 2026

∙ Paid

SEQH CAPITAL RESEARCH - TEAR SHEET
HYPERSCALER NUCLEAR PPA ECONOMICS - PRICING POWER IS REAL, BUT THE MARKET HAS STOPPED PAYING FOR HEADLINES

WHAT THIS REPORT ARGUES

SEQH reconstructs the economics of 12 hyperscaler-linked nuclear transactions involving Microsoft, Meta, AWS, and Google, representing more than 10 GW of restarted, uprated, or pre-ordered nuclear capacity.
The core conclusion is that nuclear pricing is rising, but the investment implications are more nuanced: the premium increasingly reflects asset scarcity and the repriced PJM capacity market, while public equities have become far less responsive to announcement headlines.

Core thesis

Only a small subset of the deal book discloses actual dollar economics, so this report separates company disclosures, named third-party price estimates, and explicit SEQH calculations rather than treating all announced gigawatts as equally valuable.
Existing-fleet restart and uprate transactions generally back-solve into a $65 to $115 per MWh range, while the newest PJM and ERCOT deals cluster closer to $90 to $120 per MWh.
SEQH’s broader read is that clean, firm nuclear power is no longer being priced against cheap legacy renewables or old energy-only power curves. It is increasingly being priced against the full cost of reliable grid power for hyperscale data centers.

PJM’s all-in wholesale power cost reached about $114.50 per MWh in the first half of 2026, up more than 50 percent year over year, while load-weighted energy pricing also moved sharply higher.
Capacity pricing drove much of that change: the PJM base residual auction increased from $28.92 per MW-dayin 2024/25 to nearly $270 per MW-day in 2025/26, then rose to administrative-cap levels above $329 per MW-day for later delivery years.
That changes the comparison for hyperscalers. A roughly $90 to $115 per MWh nuclear contract can still carry a premium to energy-only pricing, but it is no longer necessarily expensive versus firm, unhedged grid power with capacity costs included.

Microsoft and Constellation’s Crane / Three Mile Island restart remains the highest-profile transaction, with implied pricing estimated around $101 to $115 per MWh for 835 MW of restarted capacity.
Meta and Constellation’s Clinton deal is estimated near $70 per MWh for 1,121 MW of uprated output, materially lower than the Crane restart despite being signed into a stronger power market.
Meta and Vistra’s PJM uprate agreements, covering 2,609 MW across Perry, Davis-Besse, and Beaver Valley, are estimated around $101 per MWh at full run rate by BMO, with other estimates in an $85 to $100 per MWhrange.
AWS and Vistra’s Comanche Peak agreement for 1,200 MW is estimated between $90 and $120 per MWh, while AWS and Talen’s restructured Susquehanna PPA implies roughly $65 to $92 per MWh, depending on whether the calculation uses term-average or full-volume economics.

The report’s most counterintuitive finding is that Constellation did not sustain its own pricing power across its two headline deals. Its 2024 Crane restart carried the premium valuation, while the 2025 Clinton uprate priced materially lower despite the market’s broader move higher.
Vistra appears to have captured the strongest economics in the newest transaction cohort, with Meta’s PJM agreements matching or exceeding Constellation’s earlier peak on some estimates.
SEQH argues that the premium attaches less to any single company’s negotiating skill and more to specific asset scarcity, such as cold restarts, high-value uprates, location, and the prevailing capacity-price regime when the contract is signed.

The report draws a sharp line between signed, operating-fleet transactions and new-build SMR or advanced-reactor frameworks. Meta-TerraPower, Meta-Oklo, Google-Kairos, Standard Power-NuScale, Switch-Oklo, and Equinix-Oklo do not provide firm, comparable power-price disclosure.
In SEQH’s view, these should be treated as options on future clean-firm capacity, not as revenue-equivalent contracts.
The key precedent is the 1,848 MWe Standard Power and NuScale framework, which never became a binding PPA. The report does not claim current pre-orders will fail, but it argues that investors should apply a conversion discount to unpriced, non-binding gigawatt headlines.
For Oklo specifically, the more meaningful unit of analysis is cash and optionality: Equinix’s $25 million prepayment and related most-favored-nation discount right, rather than the headline future MW figure.

The report finds that announcement alpha has decayed. The largest reactions occurred in the 2024 cohort, including Constellation up 22.3 percent on the Microsoft / Crane announcement and Talen up 12.7 percent on the AWS Cumulus transaction.
By 2025 and 2026, price reactions became mixed. Vistra fell 4.5 percent on the Comanche Peak news but rose 10.5 percent on the larger Meta PJM deal announcement.
Despite record nuclear-hyperscaler deal activity, Constellation, Vistra, Talen, Oklo, NuScale, and X-energy were all down or materially below prior highs in 2026 according to the report’s August 17 snapshot.
The practical conclusion is that stocks are now responding more to deal scale, scarcity narrative, and credibility than to back-solved per-MWh economics that the market often cannot observe directly.

The next major pricing signal is whether PJM capacity auctions stabilize or remain near the administrative cap as more supply comes online.
Crane / Three Mile Island’s restart schedule and actual first power will be the live test of whether restart economics can match the premium embedded in the contract.
Any disclosure of actual Meta-Vistra, Meta-TerraPower, or Meta-Oklo pricing would materially improve the market’s ability to value the sector.
The most important risk monitor for SMR names is whether pre-orders convert into binding PPAs with disclosed terms, rather than quietly lapsing or being revised.

What readers get in the full PDF
Upgrade to access the full nuclear PPA economics framework, including:

The complete 12-deal hyperscaler nuclear scorecard, with capacity, term, transaction type, and price-source methodology.
A full pricing-power ranking across Constellation, Vistra, Talen, Oklo, and the key hyperscaler counterparties.
The detailed PJM repricing bridge, including energy, capacity, all-in wholesale-cost, and renewable-PPA comparisons.
The complete public-company reaction table across CEG, VST, TLN, OKLO, SMR, and XE.
A deeper analysis of why SMR pre-orders should be modeled as options rather than contracts, plus the catalysts that could turn announced gigawatts into financeable future revenue.

FULL EXCEL FILE DATA-SHEET AND 20-PAGE PDF REPORT ATTACHED BELOW: