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The e-commerce company’s corporate agreements follow the news that Google also plans to go nuclear with its data centres.
Amazon has signed three agreements on developing nuclear energy projects in order to meet data centre energy demand.
Under these agreements, the e-commerce giant will support the construction of several new small modular reactors (SMRs), which will be built by Energy Northwest, a consortium of state public utilities in Washington.
The tech giant also signed an agreement in Virginia with utility company Dominion Energy, with a view to develop an SMR project near Dominion’s existing nuclear power station.
Amazon is also investing in X-energy, a nuclear reactor and fuel start-up. The company’s nuclear reactor design will be used in the Energy Northwest project.
According to Amazon, the Energy Northwest SMRs are expected to generate “roughly 320 MW of capacity for the first phase of the project” with the option to increase this to 960 MW in total – enough to power 770,000 homes in the US. Meanwhile, the agreement with Dominion is expected to bring at least 300 MW of power to the region.
Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services, said the agreements will encourage the construction of new nuclear technologies.
“Nuclear is a safe source of carbon-free energy that can help power our operations and meet the growing demands of our customers, while helping us progress toward our climate pledge commitment to be net-zero carbon across our operations by 2040,” he said.
Amazon’s agreements follow similar plans from other tech giants, which are also betting on nuclear energy to address the demands of data centres and the AI boom.
This week, Google announced a corporate agreement to purchase nuclear energy from SMRs, which will be developed by Kairos Power in a bid to “accelerate the clean energy transition across the US”.
Additionally, Microsoft struck a deal last month that will see the reopening of Three Mile Island, a power plant in Pennsylvania and the site of the worst nuclear accident in the US.
While nuclear power is often heralded as being clean and efficient, it is also associated with major global disasters, including Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Along with safety concerns, nuclear power also faces practical issues such as cost and time. Amazon said its projects will help meet energy needs “beginning in the early 2030s”. While it is betting on SMRs along with Google, no SMRs are in operation yet in the US.
And while nuclear power is a low-carbon source of energy, it still requires finite materials such as uranium, meaning it is not a renewable resource. It also produces long-lasting radioactive waste that can be damaging to human health and the environment.
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