Amazon is the latest tech giant to deploy nuclear energy as it races to power its power-hungry artificial intelligence programs.
Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing arm of the Seattle-based e-tailer, said Wednesday it will invest more than $500 million in three projects in Washington state, Virginia and Pennsylvania.
The Virginia-Washington agreement requires AWS to provide funding to utilities to study the feasibility of adding small modular reactors to existing energy stations.
In return, Amazon will have the right to purchase power from four initially installed small modular nuclear reactors.
Energy Northwest, a consortium of state utilities, has the option to add up to eight 80 MW modules, resulting in a total capacity of up to 960 MW, equivalent to more than 770,000 U.S. homes. It will have enough capacity to supply electricity.
The additional power will be made available to Amazon and utility companies to power homes and businesses.
AWS has reached an agreement with a Virginia power company to build a small modular nuclear reactor near an existing power plant in Louisa County.
Small modular reactors (SMRs) are smaller in size and capacity compared to conventional nuclear reactors.
“Modular” means it can be manufactured in a factory and transported to site for assembly, allowing for more flexible deployments and potentially reducing construction time and costs.
“Our agreement will accelerate the creation of new nuclear technologies that will generate energy for decades to come,” said Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services.
SMR assembles components in a factory to reduce construction costs. The current large nuclear reactor is being built on site. Critics of SMR argue that it is too costly to achieve desirable economies of scale.
Nuclear power, which generates electricity with virtually no greenhouse gas emissions and provides high-wage union jobs, has broad support from both Democrats and Republicans.
However, a US SMR does not yet exist. NuScale, the only U.S. company with an SMR design license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, had to cancel its first SMR project last year to build the technology at a U.S. laboratory in Idaho. .
Additionally, SMRs would produce long-lasting radioactive nuclear waste for which the United States does not yet have a final disposal site.
Scott Burnell, a spokesman for the U.S. NRC, said the company “does not provide details” about the planned SMR, saying it has not yet been submitted to regulators.
Google announced Monday that it has signed the world's first corporate agreement to purchase power from multiple small modular nuclear reactors to meet the power needs of artificial intelligence.
The technology company's deal with Kairos Power aims to have Kairos's first small modular nuclear reactor operational by 2030, with additional deployments thereafter through 2035.
The companies did not disclose financial details of the deal or where in the United States the plant would be built.
Google announced an agreement to purchase a total of 500 megawatts of power from six to seven nuclear reactors, which is less than the power output of its current reactors.
Last month, Microsoft and Constellation Energy signed a power agreement to help restore parts of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, site of the worst nuclear disaster in the United States in 1979.
Goldman Sachs estimates that U.S. data center power usage is expected to nearly triple between 2023 and 2030, with natural gas, wind and solar power expected to fill the gap. It is assumed that approximately 47 gigawatts of new power generation capacity will be required.
with post wire
