KENNEWICK — Amazon will join Energy Northwest in Richland to develop new nuclear power generation in Washington state, the giant Seattle online retailer announced Wednesday morning.
It also is advancing its interest in new nuclear energy with funding for X-energy, a developer of small modular reactors, to expand the company’s nuclear equipment manufacturing capability and by working with Dominion Energy to explore the development of a small modular reactor facility in Virginia, Amazon announced.
In Washington state, Amazon has signed an agreement to pay for the initial feasibility phase to develop a small modular reactor project near the Northwest’s only commercial nuclear power plant, the Columbia Generating Station.
The plant is 10 miles north of Richland on unused Hanford nuclear site land leased from the federal government.
In exchange, Amazon will have the right to buy electricity from the initial four modules proposed, which would generate 320 megawatts of energy capacity.
“As a member of Washington’s business community, Amazon is committed to investing in new nuclear energy technologies that can help power our operations and provide net-new, safe sources of carbon-free energy to the grid,” said Kevin Miller, Amazon’s vice president of global data centers.
Under current plans, the first modules in Washington could be generating power by 2031 or 2032, said Bob Schuetz, Energy Northwest chief executive officer.
The feasibility study funding from Amazon should jump start Energy Northwest’s efforts to develop an X-energy advanced nuclear project after it has worked for several years with the limited money available from public power on the project and has struggled to find funding for it.
“This is a great opportunity,” Schuetz said. “They have a need and we’ve been working on it long enough that I think they trust us and X-energy to keep the project moving forward.”
Energy Northwest has the option to further build out the site by adding up to eight additional modules for a total generating capacity of up to 960 megawatts.
By comparison, the Columbia Generating Station has a total generating capacity of up to 1,207 megawatts, or enough electricity to power about 1 million homes.
It produces about 10% of the electricity used in Washington.
Nuclear power jobs estimate
While Amazon is willing to take all the power from the first four modular reactors planned, there should be an opportunity for public power to buy some of it, Schuetz said.
“One of the greatest concerns for community-owned electric utilities is having access to reliable sources of electricity that fulfill carbon-free energy mandates,” said Kurt Miller, executive director of Northwest Public Power Association. “Advanced nuclear fits the bill.”
The region is projected to be short 3,000 megawatts or more by the end of the decade, based on a growing population and increasing load from manufacturing and other new businesses along with the continuing transition to meet clean energy goals, Schuetz said.
Next year, the coal-fired power plant in Centralia, the last one operating in the state, is expected to permanently close.
“Amazon’s announced investment in small modular reactors gives me hope for the future of the Northwest power grid,” said Rick Dunn, general manager of the Benton PUD.
“Under 100% non-emitting electricity requirements, nuclear power is the only technology capable of reliably delivering the massive amounts of around-the-clock energy our society needs, while also positioning utilities to meet aggressive electrification goals,” he said.
The planned small modular reactors will use the Xe-100 design, a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor developed by X-energy, a global leader in advanced nuclear reactor and fuel technology.
Energy Northwest and X-energy have planned for a modular nuclear reactor project since 2020, initially expecting to work with Dow to have a new nuclear project operating in Eastern Washington in 2030.
But plans changed and now the first X-energy project is planned at Dow’s Seadrift Operations manufacturing site on the Texas Gulf Coast.
The initial four modules planned by Amazon near the Tri-Cities are expected to support up to 1,000 temporary construction jobs and as many as 100 permanent jobs during operation. Construction would be done by members of the Central Washington Building Trades.
With the ability to expand the project by adding modules one at a time as needed, there is the opportunity to keep construction workers experienced in building the reactors employed as more are added, Schuetz said.
Start of Amazon, X-energy collaboration
No good estimate of the cost of the feasibility phase of the project is available yet, Schuetz said.
It is expected to take about two years to complete environmental, safety, permitting, licensing and risk analyses, which would lead to a construction application.
Somewhere in the range of $2 billion to $3 billion would be needed to build the first four modules, Schuetz estimated.
The Department of Energy is expected to loan as much as 80% of the construction costs.
The Energy Northwest project is just the start of a planned collaboration between Amazon and X-energy to bring more than 5 gigawatts of new power projects online across the United States by 2039, representing the largest commercial target of small modular reactors to date, according to X-energy.
“One of the fastest ways to address climate change is by transitioning our society to carbon-free energy sources, and nuclear energy is both carbon-free and able to scale, which is why it’s an important area of investment for Amazon,” said Matt Garman, chief executive officer of Amazon Web Services.
Amazon’s announcement also included anchoring a $500 million investment in X-energy’s reactor design and licensing, as well as the first phase of its TRISO-X fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
Its agreement with Dominion Energy in Virginia would explore the development of a small modular reactor near Dominion’s existing North Anna nuclear power station. Dominion projects that power demands will increase by 85% over the next 15 years, according to Amazon.
Corporate interest in nuclear power
Amazon’s announcement came a day after Google announced it had signed a corporate agreement to purchase nuclear energy from multiple small modular reactors to be developed by Kairos Power.
Last month, Microsoft announced a new power purchase agreement that would enable the restart of an 835 megawatt nuclear facility in Pennsylvania, part of the Three Mile Island power plant, which was retired in 2019.
The DOE Office of Policy said in August that data centers, partly driven by the need to power new artificial applications will be a significant factor of near-term electricity demand growth.
The Electric Power Research Institute estimates that data centers could grow to consume up to 9% of U.S. electricity generation annually by 2030, up from 4% of total load in 2023.
Data center expansion plus technologies like artificial intelligence, new domestic manufacturing and electrification in different sectors such as transportation and buildings could lead to total energy demand growing 15 to 20% in the next decade, the DOE Office of Policy said.
Amazon already has a significant presence in Eastern Oregon and Washington.
It operates about a half dozen data centers in Morrow County and neighboring Umatilla County employing 940 full-time workers, making Eastern Oregon the company’s largest data center cluster after northern Virginia.
It plans more data centers in Morrow County’s Boardman about 50 miles southwest of the Tri-Cities.
In the Tri-Cities, it has hired about 1,800 workers since June to staff a new package hub in east Pasco.
