Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Technology

What Makes Amazon’s Big Nuclear Deal Different

The company is placing a huge bet on small modular reactors.

The Amazon logo in an atom.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

First it was Microsoft and Constellation restarting Three Mile Island, then it was Google announcing it would buy power from small modular reactors built by Kairos. Now today, Amazon has said it’s investing in X-energy, the small modular reactor and fuel company, and supporting a joint project by X-energy and Energy Northwest, the Washington state public utility.

So what makes this deal different from all other nuclear tech deals?

“What makes this significantly different is the investment,” Brett Rampal, a senior director at Veriten, an energy advisory company, told me. Amazon is not just buying the power that a nuclear reactor will produce after it’s completed. It’s getting involved in the projects themselves.

This has not typically been how big tech companies with commitments to reduce emissions and rapidly expanding energy needs to power more data centers get involved with nuclear power.

The Microsoft/Constellation deal to restart Three Mile Island did not entail Microsoft taking on the financial and logistical burden of upgrading the plant so that it could be up and running again in a few years — for that, Constellation will be putting $1.6 billion of its own money into the plant. Instead, Microsoft signed a 20-year deal for the plant’s output, known as a power purchase agreement, which guarantees a price for the plant’s product. These types of deals were pioneered by Google to support renewables projects by giving them a guaranteed income independent of how electricity prices might fluctuate in whatever market they were selling into.

Amazon’s deal, on the other hand, is a “direct investment in the Energy Northwest project,” an X-energy spokesperson told me. According to an Amazon spokesperson, that means a “capital commitment to fund development, licensing and construction of an SMR project with Energy Northwest in Washington State,” a spokesperson told me. The project would be sited near the existing Columbia Generating Station in Richland.

“This is Amazon saying, We’re in, and we need this, and we’re putting skin in the game directly,” Rampal said. By contrast, other nuclear deals like Microsoft’s and Google’s “send demand signals and are, Hey, we’ll be there when you’re done.”

Energy Northwest and X-energy signed a joint development agreement for the project last year. If all goes as planned, the finished facility could be as large as 960 megawatts from 12 X-energy 80-megawatt “modules.” Amazon could buy the electricity from up to four of the modules, totaling 320 megawatts. Amazon said that the project “will help meet the forecasted energy needs of the Pacific Northwest beginning in the early 2030s.” (Last year X-energy and Energy Northwest said the project would be online “by 2030.”)

“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,” Greg Cullen, Energy Northwest’s vice president for energy services and development, said in a release. “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.”

That “first, bold” step is difficult because nuclear development is notoriously risky even with proven technologies, let alone novel designs like X-energy’s. The only other small modular reactor deal in the United States, between NuScale (which has the only approved small modular reactor design) and a coalition of Mountain West utilities, fell through due to escalating costs.

Amazon is also anchoring an equity investment in X-energy itself, alongside Citadel founder Ken Griffin and other investors. Amazon said its investment in X-energy “includes manufacturing capacity to develop the SMR equipment to support more than 5 gigawatts of new nuclear energy projects utilizing X-energy’s technology.”

The reactor design that Energy Northwest and X-energy plan to deploy, the Xe-100, is in the “pre-application” process with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. X-energy and the NRC have been engaging with each other since 2018, according to the docket for the project.

Amazon also announced that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Virginia utility Dominion Energy to look into SMR projects. Earlier this year, Dominion put out a request for proposals for SMRs at its existing North Anna site near Richmond, whose two reactors have a capacity of around 1,800 megawatts.

The Department of Energy has estimated that existing nuclear sites could host an additional 60 to 95 gigawatts of new nuclear power, which means the United States’ nuclear output could double without having to set up a new site for a reactor. The North Anna site has an “early site permit” from the NRC, which approves a particular site for nuclear reactors.

Yellow

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Climate

AM Briefing: How Clean Energy Fared in Q1

On earnings, a DOJ memo, and flying cars

How Clean Energy Fared in Q1
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Yosemite could get 9 inches of snow between now and Sunday Temperatures will rise to as high as 104 degrees Fahrenheit in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, as Central and Southeast Asia continue to bake in a heatwave Hail, tornadoes, and severe thunderstorms will pummel the U.S. Heartland into early next week.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Tariffs, uncertainty were the themes of the week in clean energy Q1 calls

It was a busy week of earnings calls for the clean energy sector, which, as a whole, saw investment dip by nearly $8 billion in the first three months of the year. Tariffs — especially as they impact the battery supply chain — as well as changes to federal policy under the new administration and electricity demand were the major themes of the week, my colleague Matthew Zeitlin wrote.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Sparks

The First Sign the U.S. Oil and Gas Sector Is Pulling Back

Three weeks after “Liberation Day,” Matador Resources says it’s adjusting its ambitions for the year.

Money and an oil rig.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

America’s oil and gas industry is beginning to pull back on investments in the face of tariffs and immense oil price instability — or at least one oil and gas company is.

While oil and gas executives have been grousing about low prices and inconsistent policy to any reporter (or Federal Reserve Bank) who will listen, there’s been little actual data about how the industry is thinking about what investments to make or not make. That changed on Wednesday when the shale driller Matador Resources reported its first quarter earnings. The company said that it would drop one rig from its fleet of nine, cutting $100 million of capital costs.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Climate Tech

Rise and Grind Through the Apocalypse

At San Francisco Climate Week, everything is normal — until it very much isn’t.

San Francisco.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

San Francisco Climate Week started off on Monday with an existential bang. Addressing an invite-only crowd at the Exploratorium, a science museum on the city’s waterfront, former vice president and long-time climate advocate Al Gore put the significance and threat of this political moment — and what it means for the climate — in the most extreme terms possible. That is to say, he compared the current administration under President Trump to Nazi Germany.

“I understand very well why it is wrong to compare Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich to any other movement. It was uniquely evil,” Gore conceded before going on: “But there are important lessons from the history of that emergent evil.” Just as German philosophers in the aftermath of World War II found that the Nazis “attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false,” Gore said, so too is Trump’s administration “trying to create their own preferred version of reality,” in which we can keep burning fossil fuels forever. With his voice rising and gestures increasing in vigor, Gore ended his speech on a crescendo. “We have to protect our future. And if you doubt for one moment, ever, that we as human beings have that capacity to muster sufficient political will to solve this crisis, just remember that political will is itself a renewable resource.”

Keep reading...Show less
Green