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Amazon Funds 12 Small Modular Reactors at Former Indiana Coal Site
By Drooid · · How we work
Amazon’s Indiana SMR Project
Amazon has entered an agreement with nuclear-startup X-energy and utility American Electric Power (AEP) to finance the construction of 12 Xe-100 small modular reactors (SMRs) on the former Breed Generating Station site in Fairbanks, Sullivan County, Indiana. The 960-megawatt facility would feed the regional electric grid and supply power to Amazon’s data centers. The company estimates the project could generate roughly 1,000 construction jobs and 100 permanent positions, though no specific timeline for groundbreaking or operation has been disclosed.
Background: SMRs and Prior Nuclear Efforts
SMRs are compact reactors that can be mass-manufactured, a strategy intended to curb the cost overruns and schedule delays that plagued recent large-scale U.S. nuclear builds. X-energy, which went public in April 2024, designs the Xe-100, an advanced reactor still undergoing licensing. Industry analysts note that the manufacturing efficiencies promised by SMRs often take a decade to materialize. The Indiana site replaces the defunct coal-fired Breed plant, echoing earlier abandoned nuclear projects such as the Marble Hill plant, halted in 1983 after $2.5 billion was spent.
Participants and Roles
- Amazon – Investor and prospective power purchaser; leading a $700 million Series C-1 financing round for X-energy in October 2024.
- X-energy – Designer and supplier of the Xe-100 reactors; seeks to deliver its first commercial plant at a Dow Chemical facility in Texas before scaling to the Indiana project.
- American Electric Power (AEP) – Designated operator of the Indiana SMR complex, responsible for integrating the reactors with the public grid.
Project Scale and Economic Outlook
The Indiana agreement marks Amazon’s second commercial partnership with X-energy and is three times larger than the first deal announced two years earlier. Together, Amazon and X-energy aim to bring more than 5 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity online in the United States by 2039. The reactors can be cooled by air, water, or a hybrid system, a feature Amazon highlights as allowing deployment in water-constrained regions without increasing local water demand.
Potential Impact and Industry Context
If realized, the project would add a carbon-free power source to the Midwestern grid and support Amazon’s growing data-center energy needs. It also reflects a broader trend of major cloud providers—Meta, Microsoft, Google—exploring nuclear options to power AI workloads. Nonetheless, the Xe-100 remains unproven, and the timeline depends on successful licensing and the completion of X-energy’s inaugural Texas plant.