Amazon funds 960-megawatt nuclear plant in Indiana with X-energy reactors
Amazon is backing development of a 12-reactor small modular nuclear facility at a former coal plant site, marking the second and largest commercial agreement between the two companies.
What happened
Amazon announced Monday it is funding a proposed 960-megawatt nuclear power plant in Indiana to be operated by American Electric Power and supplied with 12 Xe-100 small modular reactors by X-energy. The plant will be built on the site of a demolished coal power plant south of Terre Haute, with Amazon committed to purchase its power. This is the second commercial agreement between Amazon and X-energy—three times larger than a deal announced two years ago—and follows Amazon's $700 million Series C-1 investment in X-energy in October 2024. The companies have stated they plan to build 5 gigawatts of new nuclear generating capacity in the U.S. by 2039. Power from the plant would serve both the public electric grid and Amazon's data centers.
Context
The deal reflects a broader industry bet that small modular reactors can revitalize nuclear power in the U.S., which has been hampered by massive budget overruns and schedule delays on recent large projects. Mass manufacturing of smaller reactors is expected to reduce costs and timelines, though experts caution that benefits from mass manufacturing typically take about a decade to materialize. X-energy's success depends critically on delivering its first power plant at Seadrift, Texas—a Dow Chemical facility with four reactors currently undergoing NRC construction permit review, where the company has not yet broken ground. X-energy went public on Nasdaq in April at $23 per share, with shares initially surging 27% but subsequently dropping nearly two-thirds; the Amazon announcement boosted pre-market trading by about 10%.