Amazon announced on Wednesday that it has entered into agreements to support nuclear energy development in three states to meet its data centers’ growing demand for more electrical power.
The contracts with the states of Washington, Virginia, and Pennsylvania for the construction of small modular reactors (SMRs) are a part of Amazon’s seven-year goal to draw from carbon-free energy by 2030.
“Nuclear power is one part of that mix—it can be brought online at scale, and has a decades-long record of providing a reliable source of safe carbon-free energy for communities around the world,” Amazon said.
SMRs are more advanced physical reactors with faster build times that can be built closer to the power grid because of their smaller footprint, Amazon said.
“Nuclear energy is both carbon-free and able to scale—which is why it’s an important area of investment for Amazon,” said Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman. “Our agreements will encourage the construction of new nuclear technologies that will generate energy for decades to come.”
In Washington, Amazon entered into a contract with Energy Northwest to build four SMRs that will generate approximately 320 megawatts of capacity in the first phase of the project before it ramps up to 960 megawatts, enough to power over 770,000 homes.
Amazon entered into an agreement with Dominion Energy in Virginia to begin the development of an SMR project close to the North Anna Nuclear Generating Station in Louisa County, Virginia.
“This will bring at least 300 megawatts of power to the Virginia region, where Dominion projects that power demands will increase by 85 percent over the next 15 years,” Amazon said.
In Pennsylvania, Amazon said it plans to “co-locate a data center” near the Talen Energy nuclear plant, which will provide power to the data center and help “preserve the existing reactor.”
Google’s SMR Initiative
Two days ago Google announced its own initiative to buy SMRs from Kairos Power to feed its data centers.SMRs are able to meet the increasing electricity demands, especially in the age of artificial intelligence, while remaining carbon neutral, Google said.
According to a U.S. Department of Energy report, nuclear power in the United States could triple from 100 gigawatts in 2024 to 300 gigawatts in 2050 to meet the power needs of these data centers.
This has led to the restoration of formerly abandoned nuclear reactors.
Three Mile Island Reopened
In September, Microsoft entered into a 20-year power purchase agreement to reopen Pennsylvania’s closed Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power plant to meet its own decarbonization carbon-free goal by 2035.Joe Dominguez, president and CEO of Constellation Energy—the company that owns the TMI plant—said the Unit 1 reactor that was not a part of Unit 2’s March 1979 meltdown is a “is a fully independent facility.”
“Powering industries critical to our nation’s global economic and technological competitiveness, including data centers, requires an abundance of energy that is carbon-free and reliable every hour of every day, and nuclear plants are the only energy sources that can consistently deliver on that promise,” Dominguez said.
