Amazon investing in SMRs to deploy 5 GW by 2039

Together with billionaire Ken Griffin, founder of Citadel (one of the world's leading alternative investment firms), the company is backing a $500 million investment in small modular reactors. X-energy will receive support for developing an initial 320-MW project with Energy Northwest in Washington state; and Dominion has a memorandum of understanding with Amazon to advance SMR development in Virginia.

The overarching goal is to provide the carbon-free electricity needed to meet growing demand for artificial intelligence applications and data center support.

“We need smart solutions that can help us meet growing energy demands while also addressing climate change,” said Kevin Miller, Amazon Web Services’ vice president of global data centers. “We view advanced new nuclear capacity as really key and essential.”

Financing for X-energy: Amazon will support Maryland-based X-energy’s reactor design and licensing, as well at the first phase of its TRISO-X fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Griffin, affiliates of Ares Management Corp., the Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) under NATO’s governance, and University of Michigan are joining Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund in the financing round.

“Nuclear is an important source of clean and reliable power that our nation needs to meet the growing demand for energy,” Griffin said. “X-energy provides an impactful solution to a critical challenge—and the support Amazon, Dow, and other major corporations have provided underscores its potential and merit.”

X-energy chief executive Clay Sell said, “Amazon and X-energy are poised to define the future of advanced nuclear energy in the commercial marketplace. To fully realize the opportunities available through artificial intelligence, we must bring clean, safe, and reliable electrons onto the grid with proven technologies that can scale and grow with demand. . . . We are now uniquely suited to deliver on this transformative vision for the future of energy and tech.”

The Xe-100 SMR is an 80-MWe high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor that can be scaled into a four-pack 320-MWe power plant and up to a 960-MWe plant with 12 units. It uses a pebble bed system (uranium particles encased in graphite) and relies on helium as a coolant. According to X-energy, the modular reactor design is “road-shippable and intended to drive scalability, accelerate construction timelines, and create more predictable and manageable construction costs.”

With federal support, X-energy is currently developing an initial Xe-100 plant at Dow Inc.’s manufacturing site on the Gulf Coast of Texas. The company was one of two selected by the Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP) for funding.

Dominion MOU: Amazon will support the Virginia-based utility in exploring new development structures to advance SMR deployment in its state.

“This agreement builds on our longstanding partnership with Amazon and other leading tech companies to accelerate the development of carbon-free power generation in Virginia,” said Robert M. Blue, president and chief executive of Dominion Energy. “It's an important step forward in serving our customers' growing needs with reliable, affordable and increasingly clean energy. This collaboration gives us a potential path to advance SMRs with minimal rate impacts for our residential customers and substantially reduced development risk.”

Miller added, “Bringing new sources of carbon-free energy to the grid is an important part of Amazon's commitment to serve our customers and achieve net-zero carbon across our operations by 2040. Nuclear energy is safe, reliable, and can help meet the energy needs of our customers for decades to come. We're excited to innovate alongside Dominion to explore the opportunities that SMRs can bring to Virginia, while also helping us all address climate change.”

Power demand in Virginia is growing by more than 5 percent annually and is expected to double in the next 15 years, pushing Dominion to consider advanced nuclear reactors. Dominion put out a request for proposals in July, asking leading SMR companies to submit ideas for adding generation units at its North Anna Power Station.”

The big picture: Amazon’s announcement comes on the heels of similar partnerships struck between Microsoft and Constellation for dedicated power generation achieved through the start of Constellation’s Crane Clean Energy Center (formerly TMI-1) and that between Google and Kairos Power to construct seven new SMRs to feed the demand of AI needs.

Data center expansion and other factors are expected to increase electricity demand by 15 to 20 percent over the next decade, according to DOE. Data centers could consume as much as 9 percent of the nation’s electricity generation annually by 2030, up from 4 percent in 2023, according to a report in May by the Electric Power Research Institute.

At an event Wednesday morning to announce Amazon’s new nuclear ambitions, secretary of energy Jennifer Granholm applauded what she called the latest “BYOP,” or “bring your own power,” plans from a major tech company.

“We started convening hyperscalers about a year ago to have this conversation and talk about anticipated energy needs,” Granholm said. “We want these data centers built in the United States, for a variety of reasons, including national security.”

She added, “We know we need additional power to be able to do that, and we want that to be clean power.”