What Makes Amazon’s Big Nuclear Deal Different

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.