Amazon Backs Massive Nuclear SMR Deployment: 5 GW with X-Energy, Agreements With Energy Northwest, Dominion
In yet another major set of deals spearheaded by a tech giant in support of nuclear power development, Amazon will back the deployment of 5 GW of new X-energy small modular reactor (SMR) projects by 2039, starting with an initial four-unit 320-MWe Xe-100 plant with regional utility Energy Northwest in central Washington.
Separately, Amazon signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Dominion Energy to explore the deployment of a 300-MW SMR project near Dominion’s existing 1,892-MW North Anna nuclear power station in Virginia. The agreement seeks to help the utility meet future power demand, which is set to soar by 85% over the next 15 years.
Amazon on Wednesday said its efforts to champion nuclear are integral to its commitment to address growing energy demands while working toward its Climate Pledge to achieve net-zero carbon across its operations by 2040. “As we continue on our path to net-zero carbon, we recently announced that we matched all of the electricity consumed by our global operations with 100% renewable energy—seven years ahead of our 2030 goal,” Amazon noted. “As the energy needs of our business and customers continue to grow, we’re continuing to invest in renewables while also finding additional sources of carbon-free energy that can both help power our operations and bring new sources of energy to the grid.”
The new agreements follow Amazon affiliate Amazon Web Services’ deal last year to co-locate a 960-MW data center campus powered by Talen Energy’s 2,500-MW Susquehanna nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.
Other tech giants have secured similar deals, citing carbon commitments and a projected surge in power demand. As POWER reported in September, Microsoft and Constellation Energy committed $1.6 billion to restart the Unit 1 reactor of the shuttered Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania by 2028. The facility, known as the Crane Clean Energy Center, could supply Microsoft’s artificial intelligence (AI)-driven data centers for at least 20 years. Earlier this week, Google signed a Master Plant Development Agreement to facilitate the development of a 500-MW fleet of Kairos Power molten salt nuclear reactors by 2035 to power Google’s data centers.
X-Energy Gains Major Backer in Amazon
Amazon’s collaboration with X-energy to deploy 5 GW of new nuclear projects by 2039 “represents the largest commercial deployment target of SMRs to date,” the companies noted in a joint statement.
The effort is geared to help meet growing energy demands in “key locations,” the companies said. Amazon and X-energy said they plan to deploy their ambitious target through direct project investments and long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) “to help power Amazon operations.”
X-energy on Wednesday noted it secured a $500 million investment from Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Citadel Founder and CEO Ken Griffin, affiliates of Ares Management Corporation, NGP, and the University of Michigan through a Series C-1 financing. The financing round, which is aimed at supporting its growth and development, follows a $235 million Series C financing round in December 2023 that garnered X-energy new backers, which so far include Ares Management Corp, Ontario Power Generation, Curtiss-Wright Corp., DL E&C, and Doosan Enerbility.
As a key undertaking as part of their collaboration, Amazon and X-energy plan to “establish and standardize a deployment and financing model to develop projects in partnership with infrastructure and utility partners.” The partners’ first project will focus on the initial buildout of the four-unit 320-MWe Xe-100 project with public power utility Energy Northwest, with an option for Energy Northwest to increase the plant’s units by eight units for a combined capacity of 960 MW. The projects are slated to meet an urgent need starting in the early 2030s for carbon-free and sustainable energy generation that will be scalable and flexible in the Pacific Northwest.
“Amazon is immediately committing a direct investment in the Energy Northwest project to fund early development work that X-energy will perform,” the companies said in a joint statement.
Energy Northwest, a consortium of state public utilities, in central Washington, in a statement on Wednesday said Amazon’s funding will cover an “initial feasibility phase” of the project planned to be sited near Energy Northwest’s Columbia Generating Station nuclear energy facility in Richland, Washington. The reactors will be built, owned and operated by Energy Northwest,” Amazon separately noted. However, under the agreement, Amazon will have the right to purchase electricity from the first project, Energy Northwest said. If the SMR plant is extended, the additional power “will be available to Amazon and northwest utilities to power homes and businesses,” it said.
“We’ve been working for years to develop this project at the urging of our members and have found that taking this first, bold step is difficult for utilities, especially those that provide electricity to ratepayers at the cost of production,” noted Greg Cullen, vice president for Energy Services & Development at Energy Northwest. “We applaud Amazon for being willing to use their financial strength, need for power and know-how to lead the way to a reliable, carbon-free power future for the region,” he said.
Amazon’s investment will pivotally also fund the completion of X-energy’s design and licensing of the 80-MWe Xe-100, a high-temperature gas-cooled (HTGR) SMR, as well as the first phase of its TRISO-X fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where X-energy will manufacture its proprietary tri-structural isotropic (TRISO) particle fuel, TRISO-X. In addition, it will support future X-energy Xe-100 reactor projects.
So far, the flagship project in X-energy’s pipeline is a proposed four-unit 320-MWe Xe-100 advanced nuclear reactor facility at Union Carbide Corp. Seadrift Operations, a sprawling Dow chemical materials manufacturing site in Seadrift, Calhoun County, Texas. The Dow project—the first grid-scale SMR to power an industrial site—and X-energy’s TRISO X commercial facility comprise one of two demonstrations (alongside TerraPower’s Natrium Kemmerer 1 project in Wyoming) under the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP).
As POWER reported, X-energy’s ARDP project was originally slated to be developed with Energy Northwest in Washington state. The change to Dow as X-energy’s customer/partner officially made the HTGR demonstration a pioneering industrial project. The Dow project is backed with $1.23 billion in funding from the November 2021-enacted Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) over the seven-year demonstration period. Dow and X-energy are currently working to prepare a Part 50 construction permit application for the SMR project to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
“The investments from Amazon, our Series C-1 funders, and valued partners like Dow and the U.S. Department of Energy underscore X-energy’s leadership in commercializing SMR technology and delivering the clean, safe, affordable, and reliable power our world needs now,” noted Kam Ghaffarian, X-energy founder and executive chairman, on Wednesday.
Dominion and Amazon to Explore SMRs for Virginia
The MoU between Dominion Energy Virginia and Amazon announced on Wednesday will explore “innovative new development structures” that would help advance potential SMRs thrive in Virginia, Dominion said.
Under the agreement, the two companies will jointly explore financing, “while also mitigating potential cost and development risks for customers and capital providers,” it added. “Dominion Energy remains committed to the credit and risk profile objectives of the recently concluded business review.”
The MoU with Amazon is an integral part of its quest for new, reliable energy supplies, Dominion said. In July 2024, the utility announced a request for proposals (RFP) from major SMR nuclear technology companies to evaluate the feasibility of developing an SMR at the company’s North Anna Power Station in Louisa County, Virginia. “While the RFP is not a commitment to build an SMR at North Anna, it is an important first step in evaluating the technology and the feasibility of developing it at North Anna,” the company said on Wednesday.
Dominion has said it intends to seek rider recovery of SMR development costs in a filing likely this fall with the Virginia State Corporation Commission. Virginia’s General Assembly in April passed two bills promoting the development of SMRs of up to 500 MW. According to law firm McGuire Woods, under the legislation that took effect in July 2024, investor-owned electric utilities (Dominion and Appalachian Power Co.) may accelerate the recovery of incurred costs when developing one or more SMRs at a single site. SB 454, which applies to Dominion Energy Virginia, allows the utility to recover up to 80% of its costs to develop an SMR facility on a current basis through a special rate adjustment clause, or ‘rider,’ with the remaining costs eligible for conventional recovery.
In its Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) filed with the SCC on Oct. 15, Dominion laid out a comprehensive strategy to meet a 5.5% annual growth in power demand over the next 15 years. The plan includes investments in 3,400 MW of offshore wind, 12,000 MW of new solar, 4,500 MW of battery storage, and the integration of SMRs beginning in the mid-2030s. All the IRP’s portfolios evaluate the Virginia Clean Economy Act of 2020 and federal environmental rules for fossil plants. Several factor in the development of five 268-MW SMRs, a combined 1.3 GW starting in 2035.
“The company plans to update modeling assumptions related to SMRs in future filings based on its continued evaluation of SMR technologies,” the IRP says. “Based on updated capital, operating and maintenance costs, continued progress of licensing timelines, it is conceivable that the deployment of SMRs could be further accelerated by the company, with the first SMR being placed in service in the early-to-mid 2030s.”
“We have a lot to do in Virginia,” said Ed Bain, president, Dominion Energy Virginia, during a panel discussion hosted by The Climate Pledge on Wednesday. “If you paid attention to our IRP announced yesterday, we’re looking at 27 GW of power to be built over the next 15 years.”
At North Anna, where Dominion anticipated adding a third reactor in 2013, the company has already completed substantial early site preparation work, he noted. “It’s a site well on its way to be able to be developed.” While the RFP will inform the company’s technology decisions, Bain said Dominion intends “to get deeper with all those companies about supply chain, about fuel sourcing, as well as what kind of support and structure that they can help provide as we bring projects to bear.”
The Quest for Reliable Power for AI, Data Centers, and Digitalization
During the Climate Pledge’s event on Wednesday, AWS CEO Matt Garman underscored the urgent and critical need for reliable generated power to supply the world’s digitalization. “In 2019, Amazon signed the climate pledge, and our goal was by 2040 to get to a carbon-zero world,” he noted. “We didn’t know how to do it, and we didn’t necessarily know the path to get there, but we knew it was an important goal for us.”
The world’s future energy needs have since escalated at an “incredible rate,” he said. “As we look forward over the next decade, we need tens of gigawatts more power than we have today to power data centers, to power technology as the world continues to modernize, continues to digitalize, as we think about the power of generative AI. All of these capabilities are leading to the demands of more power, which is a critical component for us in the country.”
Amazon has so far invested in more than 500 wind and solar projects to date, Garman noted. The company boasts it has been the “largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world for four years, with 100% of its consumed power matched with renewables. “We’re building solar and offshore wind as fast as we can, but even then, we need more generation and more power to meet our customer’s future needs. And that’s where SMRs really come into play.”
Still, Kevin Miller, vice president of Global Data Centers at AWS, suggested Amazon is cognizant of the challenges ahead to bring advanced nuclear, an emerging technology, to fruition. “It’s clear that AI is going to require a lot of power and a lot of data centers,” he said. “Although the projections are it’ll take quite a while to bring the full power that we need onto the grid, we think you know that with that kind of partnership and engagement, we should be able to do it faster. We should be able to do it at less cost and, of course, never compromising on safety.”
Financing remains a major hurdle. Greg Cullen, vice president of Energy Services and Development at Energy Northwest, suggested his company will utilize all incentives at its disposal. “We have to talk about the bipartisan infrastructure law. We have talked about the inflation Reduction Act and all the things provided there. We intend to apply for and hopefully leverage the DOE loan programs to finance us. Those are going to be critical to this,” he said.
For Clay Sell, CEO of X-energy, a firm founded in 2009, Amazon’s $500 million investment and other commitments serve a clear and crucial demand signal from a substantial “hyperscaler” that endorses advanced nuclear’s latent capabilities. That is crucial to overcome risks associated with being an “early mover” on new nuclear technology.
“This quality of partners, this quality of investors, the opportunities to work with Dow, the opportunities to work with Amazon, the opportunity to work with Energy Northwest give us the momentum and the scale to drive technology deployment costs down,” he said. Amazon’s commitment covers not just the purchase of clean power, Sell noted, it is “prepared to provide capital and enable additional capital to actually build these plants.”
—Sonal Patel is a POWER senior editor (@sonalcpatel, @POWERmagazine).