Not enough electricity: Amazon wants to build a nuclear power plant!

Seattle (USA) - While nuclear power has been laid to rest in this country, tech giant Amazon has announced an agreement to develop particularly small nuclear power plants. The energy hunger of the company's own data centers makes this necessary.

The Amazon NPPs are due to arrive in the early 2030s.
The Amazon NPPs are due to arrive in the early 2030s.  © SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP

Will the new AKWs soon be available for Prime members?

Probably not. As the US company announced on Wednesday , the move into nuclear energy is part of a larger plan to switch to 100 percent CO₂-neutral electricity by 2030.

Specifically, the agreement with the utilities "Energy Northwest" and "Dominion Energy" as well as the start-up "X-energy" provides for the development of four mini nuclear power plants, so-called "Small Modular Reactors" (SMR), and their installation in the US state of Washington.

The four dwarf reactors are to generate 320 megawatts in the first phase of the project - as much as a medium-sized coal-fired power plant - but additional reactors can be added. Up to 960 megawatts are conceivable, electricity for 770,000 households.

The Amazon nuclear power plant should be connected to the grid by the early 2030s.

View of the control room at X-energy. Amazon has joined the nuclear power start-up.
ContentImage.Description   © Amazon
Amazon operates 34 data centers like this one worldwide. More are planned.
ContentImage.Description   © Amazon
This is what the mini-nuclear power plant with four reactors (80 MW) could look like one day. The plant can be flexibly expanded.
ContentImage.Description   © X-energy

Future strategy: "Small Modular Reactors" (SMR) to make data centers independent

The background to the nuclear plans is the company's growing hunger for energy. Amazon is the world's largest provider of cloud computing and operates 34 huge data centers on all continents. The company now wants to become independent in terms of energy supply.

How much the company will spend on the project and the technical details are not known. One thing is certain: if the mini-nuclear power plants actually come to fruition, the tech giant will be able to react extremely flexibly to rising demand and electricity prices.

And here in Germany? There are also data centers in Germany. According to a study commissioned by the industry association Bitkom, there were around 3,000 of them in 2023, consuming 2,341 megawatts of electricity in the same year. The trend is rising, with cloud computing in particular driving development.

However, the expansion of climate-neutral energy is making little progress. Currently, the share of "renewable" energy in the German electricity mix is around 50 percent.