Amazon looks to advanced nuclear reactors to meet climate goals

Two days aft Google chopped a “world’s first” woody to acquisition energy from precocious atomic reactors, Amazon announced 3 caller agreements of its ain today.

Each woody supports the improvement of tiny modular reactors (SMRs), which tin beryllium one-tenth to one-quarter the size of a accepted atomic powerfulness plant. If these projects marque it to the decorativeness line, SMRs would beryllium a root of c pollution-free vigor for large tech companies trying to salvage their clime goals by turning to atomic energy.

Amazon signed an agreement with Energy Northwest, a consortium of nationalist utilities successful Washington state, to “enable the development” of 4 SMRs by the aboriginal 2030s. Energy Northwest says Amazon has agreed to “fund the archetypal feasibility phase” adjacent an existing atomic vigor installation successful Richland, Washington. The e-commerce elephantine would past beryllium capable to acquisition energy from the archetypal 4 modules built with a combined capableness of 320 megawatts. The woody includes “the enactment to further physique retired the site” to 12 units generating up to 960MW, which Amazon says would beryllium capable energy to powerfulness 770,000 homes successful the US. Additional energy from the expanded site would beryllium disposable to Amazon arsenic good arsenic different businesses and homes successful the area.

Amazon is besides investing successful the startup X-energy, which is processing an precocious atomic reactor plan that’s expected to beryllium utilized successful the Energy Northwest project. Energy Northwest would yet build, own, and run the reactors. It’s been exploring plans for a atomic installation utilizing X-energy’s high-temperature gas-cooled reactor design, Xe-100, since 2020.

X-energy announced a $500 cardinal Series C-1 financing circular contiguous “anchored by” Amazon. Beyond the task successful Washington, the wealth is expected to enactment the “completion of X-energy’s reactor plan and licensing” and the improvement of a substance fabrication installation successful Oak Ridge, Tennessee. X-energy says it’s “collaborating” with Amazon to bring much than 5,000MW of caller SMR projects connected enactment successful the US by 2039, which it says would beryllium the largest commercialized deployment people of SMRs yet. To marque it each happen, the 2 companies “plan to found and standardize a deployment and financing exemplary to make projects successful concern with infrastructure and inferior partners.”

In Virginia, inferior company Dominion Energy nabbed a woody with Amazon to “explore the improvement of an SMR project” adjacent its existing North Anna atomic powerfulness station. Virginia is simply a hub for energy-hungry hyperscale information centers, and Dominion expects electricity demand successful the authorities to treble implicit the adjacent 15 years. The SMR task with Amazon would beryllium capable to make 300MW of powerfulness if it comes to fruition.

Nuclear vigor has go an charismatic root of vigor for tech companies, including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, that are struggling to conscionable commitments they’ve made connected clime change. Data centers burn done a batch of electricity — those utilized to bid AI even much so — and that means much greenhouse state emissions unless those information centers tally connected carbon-free energy. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft each person larger c footprints contiguous than they did erstwhile they made large clime commitments respective years ago.

Nuclear reactors are besides an appealing enactment for information centers that tally astir the timepiece because, dissimilar star and upwind farms, they tin make energy careless of the upwind oregon clip of day. SMRs are besides expected to beryllium faster to physique and easier to tract than larger accepted atomic powerfulness plants.

These SMR projects are taxable to regulatory support and could inactive look economical headwinds. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission certified a design for a tiny modular reactor for the archetypal time in January 2023, a plan by a institution called NuScale Power. But by November, aft facing soaring costs, NuScale had to scrap its plans to physique a highly anticipated demonstration powerfulness plant.

Nuclear vigor inactive faces absorption from advocates acrophobic astir the imaginable biology and wellness risks that travel with mining and enriching uranium for reactors and storing radioactive waste.

“It’s clip for Big Tech to recommit to solutions that work and pose little hazard to our situation and health, including making information centers arsenic vigor businesslike arsenic imaginable and committing them to beryllium powered by caller renewable vigor sources,” Johanna Neumann, a elder manager astatine the Environment America Research & Policy Center, said successful a statement released aft Google’s SMR announcement this week.