Amazon to fund 12 small nuclear reactors at former Indiana coal plant

Key Points:

• Amazon is funding the development of a proposed 960-megawatt nuclear plant in Indiana, becoming the first customer to purchase its power, with American Electric Power (AEP) operating the plant and X-energy supplying 12 Xe-100 small modular reactors.
• The plant will be located on a former coal power site south of Terre Haute and represents Amazon and X-energy’s second commercial agreement, three times larger than their initial deal two years ago.
• Amazon has heavily invested in X-energy, leading a $700 million funding round in October 2024, with plans to build 5 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity in the U.S. by 2039; the power will serve both the public grid and Amazon’s data centers.
• The project’s timeline depends on X-energy’s successful delivery of its first plant at Dow Chemical’s Seadrift site in Texas, which faces legal challenges over environmental compliance and has not yet begun construction.
• X-energy aims to revitalize the nuclear industry through small modular reactors (SMRs) with mass manufacturing to control costs and schedules, though experts caution that benefits from mass production may take about a decade to materialize; the company’s stock has experienced volatility following its April IPO and the announcement of the Amazon deal.