Tech companies are increasingly turning to nuclear power to fuel their energy-hungry AI infrastructure projects, including Amazon, which just announced plans for a new nuclear power plant.
The e-commerce giant announced Monday that it has signed an agreement with nuclear startup X-energy and American Electric Power (AEP) to explore building a nuclear power plant in Indiana.
Under the proposed partnership, the three companies aim to build 12 of X-energy’s Xe-100 small modular reactors at the site of the former Breed Generating Station coal plant. The goal is to add 960 megawatts of carbon-free electricity to Indiana’s power grid while also powering Amazon’s data centers.
Amazon said in a blog post that it would help fund the project’s development and become the first customer to purchase electricity from the plant once it’s operational. The company also estimates that the facility could create more than 1,000 temporary construction jobs and more than 100 permanent positions.
Still, the Xe-100 reactors are currently in development and are undergoing licensing. Amazon argues that plants using these advanced reactors could also use air-cooled, water-cooled, or hybrid cooling systems, potentially allowing them to operate in water-constrained regions without competing with local communities for water.
This is Amazon’s second announced nuclear project with X-energy. The two companies are also working on the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility in Washington state. Together, the companies aim to add more than 5 gigawatts of nuclear capacity to the U.S. grid by 2039, enough to power millions of homes.
The announcement comes as tech giants race to secure enough electricity to power the massive data centers needed to train and run increasingly advanced AI models. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s administration has backed their push for nuclear power as electricity demand continues to grow.
Trump signed several executive orders last year aimed at speeding up nuclear development. One of them directed the Energy Department to stop most of its previous plans to dilute and dispose of surplus plutonium and instead establish a program to process the material and make it available to private companies.
The administration is also backing efforts to bring shuttered nuclear plants back online. The Energy Department has approved roughly $4.4 billion in loans to help restart three nuclear facilities, including two projects with backing from major tech companies.
A Microsoft-backed project to restart Constellation Energy’s Crane Clean Energy Center in Pennsylvania, formerly known as Three Mile Island Unit 1, received a $1 billion Energy Department loan last year.
More recently, the department announced in September that it closed a loan of up to $1.9 billion to help finance NextEra Energy’s plans to restart the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa with the help of Google.
Meanwhile, Meta also announced earlier this year that it had reached agreements with several companies to support up to 6.6 gigawatts of new and existing nuclear power by 2035.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
