Amazon joins the big nuclear party, buying 1.92 GW for AWS

Amazon has exploited an emerging trend this week, which sees large technological companies buying energy from existing nuclear power plants.

The technology company will feed a piece of its AWS Cloud servers and AI using 1.92 electricity gigawatts from the Talen Energy Nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. Amazon is the latest hyperscaler to go directly to large nuclear operators, depending on the heels of Microsoft And Meta.

The Amazon agreement was announced on Wednesday, but it is not entirely new, instead of modifying an existing arrangement With Talen. The old version had Amazon building a data center next to the Susquehanna power plant, siphoning electricity directly from the installation without sending it to the network.

This agreement was killed by the regulators to fear that customers unjustly support the burden of the gate management. Today, Susquehanna provides power to the network, which means that each kilowatt-hour includes transmission costs that support maintenance and development of the network. The arrangement of Amazon in line of meters would have contributed to these costs.

This week’s revisions move the Amazon electricity purchase agreement in front of the counter, which means that the AWS data center will be billed like other similar customers connected to the network. The transmission lines will be reconfigured in the spring of 2026, said Talen, and the agreement covers the energy purchased until 2042.

But wait, there are more: the two companies also said that they would seek to build small modular reactors “in the imprint of the Pennsylvania of Talen” and to extend the generation in existing nuclear power plants.

The expansion of existing power plants is generally an easier way to add a new nuclear. They might include Go to more enriched fuel to produce more heat, refine settings to extract more energy or renovate turbines for a larger bump.

Microsoft launched the trend Last year, when he announced that he would work with Constellation Energy to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island, a $ 1.6 billion project that will generate 835 megawatts. Meta jump on board Earlier this month, also with Constellation, to buy the “clean energy attributes” of a nuclear power plant of 1.1 Gigawatt in Illinois.

The commitment of Amazon and Talen to build new small modular reactors is a longer shot, although there too, Amazon is in good company With his peers. Several startups continue the concept in the hope of reducing construction costs by mass producing parts. Amazon has Invested in a SMR startupX-Energy, which plans to add 300 megawatts of nuclear generation capacity to the North West Pacific and Virginia.

The new generation in existing reactors and new SMR aims “to add net energy to the PJM grid,” said Talen, referring to the region’s grid operator. This last piece is probably an attempt to trigger any criticism from regulators to leave taxpayers who hold the bag.