Amazon.com joins push for nuclear power to meet data centre demand

Nuclear power, which generates electricity nearly free of greenhouse gas emissions and provides high-paying union jobs, enjoys broad support from both Democrats and Republicans. [File]
Photo courtesy: Reuters

Amazon.com said Wednesday it has signed three agreements to develop nuclear power technology called small modular reactors, becoming the latest Big tech company will focus on new sources to meet increasing power demand from data centers,

Amazon said it would finance a feasibility study for an SMR project near the Northwest Energy site in Washington state. The SMR is planned to be developed by X-Energy. Financial details were not disclosed.

Under the agreement, Amazon will have the right to purchase power from four modules. Energy Northwest, a consortium of state public utilities, will have the option to add eight 80-megawatt modules, resulting in total capacity of up to 960 megawatts, or enough to power more than 770,000 U.S. homes. The excess electricity will be available to Amazon and utilities to power homes and businesses.

“Our agreements will encourage the creation of new nuclear technologies that will generate energy for decades to come,” said Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services.

The components of the SMR will be made in a factory to reduce manufacturing costs. Today’s large reactors are built onsite. Critics of SMRs say that they will be too expensive to achieve the desired economies of scale.

Nuclear power, which produces electricity virtually free of greenhouse gas emissions and provides high-paying union jobs, enjoys broad support from both Democrats and Republicans. But no American SMR exists yet. NewScale, the only US company with an SMR design license from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, had to cancel the first SMR project last year to build its technology at a US laboratory in Idaho.

Furthermore, SMRs will produce long-lived radioactive nuclear waste for which the US does not yet have an ultimate repository.

Scott Burnell, a spokesman for the US NRC, said “no details” have yet been presented to the regulator about the planned SMR.

data centers

Tech companies have signed several deals with nuclear companies this year as artificial intelligence boosts U.S. electricity demand for the first time in decades, although timelines for nuclear projects remain years behind target.

According to Goldman Sachs estimates, US data center electricity use is expected to nearly triple between 2023 and 2030 and will require approximately 47 gigawatts of new generation capacity. Goldman believes natural gas, wind and solar power will fill the gap.

Amazon said it is also leading a $500 million funding round to support the development of X-Energy’s SMR. Amazon and

Amazon also signed an agreement with Dominion Energy to explore the development of an SMR project near the utility’s existing power station in Virginia. Dominion said the approximately 300-MW project will help meet electricity needs in a region where demand is expected to grow 85% over 15 years.

US Senator Mark Warner said at an event held at Amazon offices in Virginia that the recent announcements could “crack the code” on building US SMRs.

Warner said he often talks to parties from other countries who are interested in purchasing SMRs from American companies, but are concerned that there are no SMRs made in the US. On Monday, Alphabet’s Google signed a deal with Kairos Power to bring SMRs online by 2030 with more deployments. By 2035.

In March, Amazon purchased a nuclear-powered datacenter from Talen Energy. Last month, Microsoft and Constellation Energy signed a power deal to help revive a unit of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, the site of the worst US nuclear accident in 1979.