Amazon makes vague commitment to unproven nuclear tech to power Indiana datacenters

To feed its Indiana datacenters with plenty of juice, Amazon is funding the development of a new nuclear facility that will provide nearly 1 gigawatt of power.

However, we'll have to see if this happens anytime soon, given the immature technology it's using.

Amazon said on Monday that it was funding the project with an undisclosed amount of cash as part of an expansion of its existing deal with X-energy, a next-generation nuclear power startup focusing on building small modular reactors (SMRs) powered by Tri-Structural ISOtropic (TRISO) fuel pellets and cooled by helium gas.

Amazon would tell us only that it’s “investing billions in nuclear energy projects” without getting specific on this project.

According to X-energy, the project will see Amazon fund the development of 12 of those SMRs, its Xe-100 model, in Sullivan County, Indiana, at the site of a former coal power plant.

Once up and running, the facility will supply 960 megawatts of grid-connected electricity, with Amazon contracting as the first power purchaser from the future plant.

As for when it might come online, that’s anyone’s guess.

Amazon wouldn’t tell us, only pointing us to an article in Indiana newspaper the South Bend Tribune in which an X-energy representative said it could be completed “as early as the mid-2030s,” though “the timeline could change the further the project gets developed.” That’s quite likely given X-energy’s current status and the state of next-generation nuclear power more generally, and to understand why it helps to understand how nuclear permitting works in the US.

First off, despite the promises, hype, and mountains of cash poured into nuclear power by the tech industry, the US has yet to build a single operable SMR.

China and Russia have built functional SMRs.

A single experimental unit has achieved criticality in the US, but it’s not a functional, power-producing reactor and was only built to demonstrate the ability for a specific design to become one.

The company with that experimental US SMR is not X-energy, who has yet to build a working reactor.

As to how reactors get approved in the US, there are two pathways that nuclear power companies can pursue: One is to get a standard design approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

That pathway gives a company license to build a reactor of a specific model wherever they want, as the design has been deemed safe independent of any physical site.