$500m investment in X-energy will help finance new generation of SMRs
Amazon is buying a stake in US nuclear developer X-energy, as part of a collaboration with the company aimed at deploying small modular reactors (SMRs) to provide low-carbon electricity to power its data centres.
Maryland-based X-energy said on Wednesday that Amazon had agreed to anchor a $500m (€460m) fundraising, which would help X-energy finance the development and licensing of its new generation of SMRs, which it said are more efficient than large-scale nuclear reactors.
Amazon’s investment in X-energy includes manufacturing capacity to develop the SMR equipment to support more than 5 GW of new nuclear energy projects using X-energy’s technology.
X-energy did not disclose the size of the stake Amazon had bought but said the technology group would take two seats on the company’s board of directors.
The Three Agreements
The equity investment by Amazon in X-energy forms part of a wider push by the technology giant into nuclear energy.
The X-energy agreement was one of three signed by Amazon on developing SMR nuclear power technology, making it the latest big tech company to push for new sources to meet surging electricity demand from data centres.
In Washington, an agreement with Energy Northwest, a consortium of state public utilities, will enable the development of four advanced SMRs.
The reactors will be constructed, owned and operated by Energy Northwest, and are expected to generate roughly 320 MW of capacity for the first phase of the project, with the option to increase to 960 MW total – enough to power the equivalent of more than 770,000 US homes.
Under an agreement with Virginia-based Dominion Energy, the companies will develop an SMR near the utility company’s two-unit North Anna nuclear power station.
Amazon has also previously signed an agreement to co-locate a data centre facility next to Talen Energy’s Susquehanna nuclear facility in Pennsylvania, which will directly power its data centres and help keep the two-unit Susquehanna station in commercial operation.
“Our agreements will encourage the construction of new nuclear technologies that will generate energy for decades to come,” said Matt Garman, chief executive officer of Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of the online retail giant founded by Jeff Bezos.
These advanced nuclear reactors have a smaller physical footprint, allowing them to be built closer to the grid, Amazon said. Compared with traditional reactors, SMRs can be put online faster because construction takes less time.
X-energy is developing its initial Xe-100 SMR plant at US chemicals company Dow’s UCC Seadrift manufacturing site on the Texas Gulf Coast. The company said the project will be the first grid-scale advanced nuclear reactor deployed to serve an industrial site in North America.
In April, X-energy was awarded a $148.5m tax credit for the construction by its wholly-owned subsidiary, Triso-X, of a first-of-a-kind advanced nuclear fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Big Tech’s Big Nuclear Push
Amazon’s agreements follow Google’s announcement earlier this week that it will back the construction of seven small SMRs from Kairos Power, becoming the first tech company to commission new nuclear power plants to provide low-carbon electricity for its energy-hungry data centres.
Google and Kairos said 14 October that under the terms of the deal, the first of its kind, Google committed to buying power generated by seven reactors to be built by Kairos Power, a seven-year-old California-based startup.
Last month, Microsoft announced that it would commit to buying 20 years’ supply of electricity from the mothballed US nuclear power plant Three Mile Island if Constellation Energy restarted the site.
US computer technology company Oracle wants to power a new data centre through nuclear energy, according to the firm’s chief technology officer Larry Ellison.
Speaking during a recent earnings call, Ellison confirmed the cloud computing giant has “already got building permits” for three SMRs, without giving details.
