Racing with Google, Amazon pushes ambitious nuclear energy project

3 contracts under SMR technology

Under the agreement, Amazon will fund a feasibility study for an SMR project near an Energy Northwest site in Washington. The reactor is being developed by X-Energy. Financial details were not disclosed by the parties.

The deal allows Amazon to buy power from four modules. Energy Northwest, a consortium of state utilities, has the option to add up to eight additional 80-megawatt modules, for a total capacity of 960 megawatts, enough to power more than 770,000 American homes. That power will be supplied to both Amazon and the utilities to serve residents and businesses.

“Our agreements will encourage the construction of new nuclear technologies that will generate energy for decades to come,” said Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman.

SMRs are manufactured in a factory-assembled design to reduce construction costs, unlike today's larger reactors which are built off-site. However, opponents of SMRs argue that they would be too expensive to be economically viable.

Nuclear energy is a clean source of energy, does not emit greenhouse gases and provides high-paying jobs, thus receiving support from both Democrats and Republicans.

However, there are currently no operational SMR reactors in the US. NuScale, the only US company licensed to design SMRs, had to cancel its first SMR project to build the technology at a laboratory in Idaho last year.

SMRs also generate long-lived radioactive nuclear waste, for which the United States has no final repository. Scott Burnell, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), said there was “no specific information” about planned SMR reactors submitted to the agency.

Power supply for data centers

Tech companies have signed deals with nuclear companies this year as demand for electricity surges for the first time in decades to power artificial intelligence (AI). But progress on nuclear projects has often been much slower than expected.

According to Goldman Sachs, electricity demand from US data centers is expected to triple between 2023 and 2030, requiring about 47 gigawatts of new power. Goldman Sachs predicts that natural gas, wind and solar will fill the gap.

Amazon said it is also leading a $500 million funding round to support X-Energy’s development of SMRs. Amazon and X-Energy aim to bring more than 5 gigawatts of power to the U.S. grid by 2039, which would be the largest commercial deployment of SMRs to date.

In addition, Amazon has also signed an agreement with Dominion Energy to jointly study and develop an SMR project near Dominion’s existing power plant in Virginia. This project will have a capacity of about 300 megawatts, aiming to meet the region’s 85% increase in electricity demand over the next 15 years.

US Senator Mark Warner said at an event at Amazon’s Virginia office that the recent announcements could “open the door” to building SMR reactors in the US. Warner said he regularly talks to parties in other countries who are interested in buying SMRs from US companies but are concerned because no SMR reactors have been built in the US.

On Monday, Alphabet's Google signed a deal with Kairos Power to put SMRs into operation starting in 2030, with more deployments through 2035.

In March, Amazon bought a nuclear-powered data center from Talen Energy. Last month, Microsoft and Constellation Energy signed a power deal to help restore a unit of Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island plant, the site of the worst nuclear accident in the United States in 1979.

(According to Reuters)

Source: https://www.baogiaothong.vn/chay-dua-voi-google-amazon-thuc-day-du-an-nang-luong-hat-nhan-day-tham-vong-192241017072123479.htm