Amazon has agreed to help pay for the development of a 960-megawatt nuclear power plant in Indiana and will be the first customer to buy its electricity. The project, announced Monday along with companies X-Energy and American Electric Power (AEP), will install 12 small modular reactors (SMRs) on the land of a former coal plant. However, no one has said when the electricity will be produced.
Nuclear power for AI. The hunger of big tech companies to power their data centers is unstoppable and is reaching an unsustainable point for the electrical grid. These huge centers that house all the infrastructure needed to run AI require a lot of electricity 24 hours a day, and nuclear power is one of the few carbon-free sources that can provide it.
Amazon has said it plans to launch more than 5 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity in the U.S. by 2039 with X-Energy, and Indiana is the second project in that plan. The first is the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility in Washington state. TechCrunch notes that the Indiana deal is three times larger than the first deal between the two companies.
Details. The plant will use 12 X-Energy Xe-100 reactors, each with a nominal power of 80 MW. According to Amazon, it will be located on the former site of the former Breed Generating Station power plant in Sullivan County, just south of Terre Haute. AEP, whose Indiana Michigan Power subsidiary has operated a nuclear plant for more than 50 years, will operate it.
Unlike many other new energy projects connected to data centers, the plant will be connected to the public grid. Amazon said it will serve both regional networks and its own facilities. The company also noted that the project could create more than 1,000 construction jobs and more than 100 permanent jobs.
Amazon says the Xe-100 uses helium as coolant and TRISO as fuel. Furthermore, the company ensures that the design prevents a nuclear meltdown through its physical principles alone, without active systems or human intervention. Amazon also indicates that the furnaces can be cooled by air, water, or a combination of both.
money Amazon did not disclose how much it is contributing. A spokesperson told The Register exclusively that the company is “investing billions in nuclear energy projects” in general. Amazon invested a good amount of money in X-Energy in one of its funding rounds, contributing $700 million in 2024. While the big tech company’s role here is both an investor and, of course, the first customer, Amazon says it won’t participate in the regulatory approval process.
What is not said. As The Register puts it, the United States has yet to build a single operational commercial SMR, and X-Energy has yet to build an operational reactor of any size. The Xe-100 is still in the development and licensing phase.
Permits in the US add another hurdle, since building permits for these projects are tied to a specific location, according to the media. X-Energy said its first project, four reactors at a Dow Chemical plant in Seadrift, Texas, is in the final stages of review by the Atomic Regulatory Commission, but that approval will not automatically apply to Indiana.
TechCrunch adds that the Seadrift site is at the center of a lawsuit in Texas alleging “habitual non-compliance” with water and waste regulations at the Dow facility, and X-Energy has yet to begin operations there.
how long will it take. An X-Energy spokesperson told the South Bend Tribune that the plant could be completed “in the mid-2030s,” but the timeline “may change” as the project moves forward. On the other hand, The Verge noted that construction of Cascade, the first plant announced by Amazon, is not expected to begin until later this decade.
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