Amazon to Fund New Nuclear Plant in Indiana
Amazon has signed an agreement with X-energy and American Electric Power to build a 960-megawatt nuclear facility in Sullivan County to power data centers and the regional grid.
What happened
Amazon announced a funding agreement with X-energy and American Electric Power (AEP) to construct a new nuclear plant in Fairbanks, Sullivan County, Indiana, on the site of the defunct coal-fired Breed Generating Station. The facility is designed to generate up to 960 megawatts of carbon-free energy for both the regional power grid and Amazon's data centers. The project plans to build 12 Xe-100 small modular reactors (SMRs), an advanced but unproven reactor design still undergoing development and licensing. Amazon projects the facility could create approximately 1,000 construction jobs and 100 permanent positions, though no construction timeline or operational date has been announced. This is the second nuclear collaboration between Amazon and X-energy, with a collective goal to deploy more than 5 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity in the US by 2039; the first project, the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility in Washington, is not expected to begin construction until the end of the decade.
Context
Amazon is one of several major technology companies—including Meta, Microsoft, and Google—investing in nuclear energy projects to meet the substantial power demands of AI data centers. The Indiana facility addresses energy infrastructure needs while avoiding water constraints through the flexibility of the SMR cooling systems. This initiative reflects Amazon's broader commitment to expanding energy grid infrastructure as part of efforts to address growing criticism around data center development. However, the deployment of these advanced reactors depends on successful licensing and development of unproven technology, and benefits from these projects will take many years to materialize.