GHG Emissions, Commercial, Sourcing Renewables - October 16, 2024
Amazon Invests in Nuclear Reactors
Amazon made an investment in a company to help meet growing energy demands and support future carbon-free projects that will use small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs).
X-Energy Reactor Company, LLC, a company that works in advanced nuclear reactor and fuel technology, announced a Series C-1 financing round of approximately $500 million anchored by Amazon.com.
The investment will fund the completion of X-energy's reactor design and licensing as well as the first phase of its TRISO-X fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The funding will support future carbon-free projects that will use X-energy’s Xe-100 advanced small modular nuclear reactors. Citadel Founder and CEO Ken Griffin, affiliates of Ares Management Corporation, NGP, and the University of Michigan have joined Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund in the financing round.
Amazon and X-energy are also collaborating to bring more than 5 gigawatts (GW) of new power projects online across the U.S. by 2039, representing the largest commercial deployment target of SMRs to date. The efforts will help meet growing energy demands in key locations through direct project investments and long-term power purchase agreements to help power Amazon operations.
X-energy and Amazon plan to establish and standardize a deployment and financing model to develop projects in partnership with infrastructure and utility partners.
The companies will initially support a four-unit, 320-megawatt (MW) project with regional utility Energy Northwest in central Washington with the option to increase that project to 12 units and 960 MW. Amazon is immediately committing a direct investment in the Energy Northwest project to fund early development work that X-energy will perform.
“This collaboration between Amazon and X-energy is a significant step toward accelerating advanced nuclear technologies that can help us bring new sources of carbon-free energy to the grid cost-effectively and safely,” said Kevin Miller, Amazon’s Vice President of Global Data Centers, in a statement. “We need smart solutions that can help us meet growing energy demands while also addressing climate change. X-energy’s technology will be integral in helping achieve this, and is an important step in Amazon’s work to achieve our Climate Pledge commitment to be net-zero by 2040.”
X-energy is developing its initial Xe-100 plant at Dow Inc.’s UCC Seadrift Operations manufacturing site on the Texas Gulf Coast. Supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP), the project will be the first grid-scale advanced nuclear reactor deployed to serve an industrial site in North America, providing the site with zero-carbon emissions power and high-temperature steam. ARDP also supports X-energy’s first-in-the-nation commercial facility to exclusively manufacture TRISO fuel, which DOE calls “the most robust nuclear fuel on Earth.”
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