Amazon.com joins push for nuclear power to meet data center demand
Adds comment from U.S. Senator Mark Warner, paragraph 15
By Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON, Oct 16 (Reuters) -Amazon.com AMZN.O said on Wednesday it has signed three agreements on developing the nuclear power technology called small modular reactors, becoming the latest big tech company to push for new sources to meet surging electricity demand from data centers.
Amazon said it will fund a feasibility study for an SMR project near a Northwest Energy site in Washington state. The SMR is planned to be developed by X-Energy. Financial details were not disclosed.
Under the agreement, Amazon will have the right to purchase electricity from four modules. Energy Northwest, a consortium of state public utilities, will have the option to add up to eight 80 MW modules, resulting in a total capacity up to 960 MWs, or enough to power the equivalent of more than 770,000 U.S. homes. The additional power would be available to Amazon and utilities to power homes and businesses.
"Our agreements will encourage the construction of new nuclear technologies that will generate energy for decades to come," said Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services.
SMRs will have their components built in a factory to reduce construction costs. Today's larger reactors are built onsite. Critics of SMRs say they will be too expensive to achieve the desired economies of scale.
Nuclear power, which generates electricity virtually free of greenhouse gas emissions and provides high-paying union jobs, gets wide support from both Democrats and Republicans.
But no U.S. SMRs exist yet. NuScale SMR.N, the only U.S. company with an SMR design license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, last year had to axe the first SMR project to build its technology at a U.S. lab in Idaho.
In addition, SMRs will produce long-lasting radioactive nuclear waste for which the U.S. does not yet have a final repository.
Scott Burnell, a spokesperson at the U.S. NRC, said "no specifics" about the planned SMRs been presented yet to the regulator.
DATA CENTERS
Tech firms have signed a rash of agreements with nuclear companies this year as artificial intelligence boosts U.S. power demand for the first time in decades, though time-lines for nuclear projects tend to lag goals by years.
U.S. data center power use is expected to roughly triple between 2023 and 2030 and will require about 47 gigawatts of new generation capacity, according to Goldman Sachs estimates. Goldman assumed natural gas, wind and solar power would fill the gap.
Amazon said it is also leading a funding round for $500 million to support X-Energy’s development of SMRs. Amazon and X-Energy aim to bring more than 5 gigawatts online in the United States by 2039, which the companies call the largest commercial deployment target of SMRs yet.
Amazon also signed an agreement with Dominion Energy D.N to explore the development of an SMR project near the utility's existing power station in Virginia. The about 300 megawatt project would help meet power needs in a region where demand is expected to jump 85% in 15 years, Dominion said.
U.S. Senator Mark Warner said at an event held at Amazon offices in Virginia that recent announcements could "crack the code" in getting U.S. SMRs built. Warner said he often talks with parties in other countries who are interested in buying SMRs from U.S. companies but wary that none have been built in the U.S.
On Monday Alphabet's Google GOOGL.O signed an agreement with Kairos Power to bring an SMR online by 2030, with more deployments through 2035.
In March, Amazon purchased a nuclear-powered datacenter from Talen Energy TLN.O. Last month, Microsoft MSFT.O and Constellation Energy CEG.O signed a power deal to help resurrect a unit of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, the site of the worst U.S. nuclear accident in 1979.
Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by David Gregorio and Franklin Paul
Aset Berkaitan
Berita Terkini
Penafian: Entiti XM Group menyediakan perkhidmatan pelaksanaan sahaja dan akses ke Kemudahan Dagangan Atas Talian, yang membolehkan sesorang melihat dan/atau menggunakan kandungan yang ada di dalam atau melalui laman web, tidak bertujuan untuk mengubah atau memperluas, juga tidak mengubah atau mengembangkannya. Akses dan penggunaan tersebut tertakluk kepada: (i) Terma dan Syarat; (ii) Amaran Risiko; dan Penafian Penuh. Oleh itu, kandungan sedemikian disediakan tidak lebih dari sekadar maklumat umum. Terutamanya, perlu diketahui bahawa kandungan Kemudahan Dagangan Atas Talian bukan permintaan, atau tawaran untuk melakukan transaksi dalam pasaran kewangan. Berdagang dalam mana-mana pasaran kewangan melibatkan tahap risiko yang besar terhadap modal anda.
Semua bahan yang diterbitkan di Kemudahan Dagangan Atas Talian kami bertujuan hanya untuk tujuan pendidikan/maklumat dan tidak mengandungi – dan tidak boleh dianggap mengandungi nasihat kewangan, cukai pelaburan atau dagangan dan cadangan, atau rekod harga dagangan kami, atau tawaran, atau permintaan untuk suatu transaksi dalam sebarang instrumen kewangan atau promosi kewangan yang tidak diminta kepada anda.
Sebarang kandungan pihak ketiga serta kandungan yang disediakan oleh XM, seperti pendapat, berita, penyelidikan, analisis, harga, maklumat lain atau pautan ke laman web pihak ketiga yang terdapat dalam laman web ini disediakan berdasarkan "seadanya" sebagai ulasan pasaran umum dan bukanlah nasihat pelaburan. Sesuai dengan apa-apa kandungan yang ditafsir sebagai penyelidikan pelaburan, anda mestilah ambil perhatian dan menerima bahawa kandungan tersebut tidak bertujuan dan tidak sediakan berdasarkan keperluan undang-undang yang direka untuk mempromosikan penyelidikan pelaburan bebas dan oleh itu, ia dianggap sebagai komunikasi pemasaran di bawah peraturan dan undang-undang yang berkaitan. SIla pastikan bahawa anda telah membaca dan memahami Notifikasi mengenai Penyelidikan Pelaburan Bukan Bebas dan Amaran Risiko mengenai maklumat di atas yang boleh diakses di sini.
