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DOE announces $900M for next-gen reactors as Amazon launches nuclear power pursuit

Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services, joined government officials and energy-sector leaders today in Virginia to announce multiple agreements to promote the expansion of next-generation nuclear power.

During the event at Amazon’s second headquarters, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm also shared news of $900 million of grant funding from the U.S. Department of Energy for the deployment of small modular reactors, or SMRs.

“What we’re starting here is a race to the top,” Granholm said. “And the bigger and bolder these companies dream, the greater the rewards will be for all of us.”

Amazon and fellow data center giants Microsoft and Google are scrambling to ink deals for new sources of clean power — which in the past year now includes nuclear. Splitting atoms for energy is attractive because it doesn’t produce carbon emissions and can operate 24/7, unlike wind and solar power that is available intermittently.

Amazon has launched partnerships with Energy Northwest and X-energy to help fund the construction of four SMRs in central Washington, and it has a deal with Dominion Energy to explore the possibility of building SMRs in Virginia.

The reactors from X-energy, said Garman, are “a new technology around nuclear power that’s going to allow us to build smaller, self-contained power generation near data centers, near where we want, in a completely safe and scalable way.”

Energy experts predict that in the next few years, data center electricity demand will double from its current consumption of roughly 4% to 6% of the nation’s total energy load. U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who spoke at the event, noted that Amazon is the top consumer of energy in the nation, moving ahead of Walmart some years ago. The Virginia area is a national data center hub and seeing a massive spike in electricity demand.

Granholm emphasized that the U.S. wants the data centers built in the country for many reasons, including national security. But the best way to go about that expansion is BYOP, she said, or “bring your own power.”

“Technology companies know that in order for these data centers to achieve great community buy-in, bringing their own power with them is an important piece of that,” she said, “so that the [utility] rates are not raised on everyday citizens.”

Granholm called out government funding and public policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act and its tax credits that support the expansion of clean energy deployments.

The path to the decarbonization, Granholm said, “is private sector led, government enabled.”

The DOE today is also hosting a meeting at Idaho National Laboratory to educate investors who are curious about backing SMR technology.

Speaking at the Amazon event, U.S. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia credited the tech company as well as Google, Microsoft and other hyperscalers running data centers for kick starting the nuclear power sector. For years, he said, nuclear advocates have been trying to start building the first SMRs, but not been successful.

“The announcement today, along with a couple of these other announcements,” Warner said, “is cracking the code.”

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