A retired coal plant site in Sullivan County, Indiana, is the next place Amazon wants to see small reactors. American Electric Power and X-energy signed a joint development agreement on 19 October to study a plant of up to 960 MW on AEP-owned land at or near the former Breed Generating Station. Amazon will provide development funding and intends to buy the electricity under a long-term contract, the companies said.
Twelve Reactors in Three Blocks
The design is X-energy's Xe-100, a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor of 80 MWe that uses helium as coolant and TRISO particle fuel. Twelve units would be arranged in three blocks of four, 320 MW per block, POWER reports. Breed belonged to Indiana Michigan Power, the AEP subsidiary that also operates the 2,278 MW Cook nuclear plant in Michigan; that is where AEP's nuclear operating experience would come from.
X-energy describes Amazon's money as milestone-based. According to AEP, the power contract would cover the plant's costs and operation for its term, so existing customers would not carry the project's risk, and Amazon ties the deal to the White House Ratepayer Protection Pledge, under which it says it pays the full cost of serving its data centers. Indiana is the second project of the Amazon and X-energy collaboration, which targets more than 5 GW of new US nuclear capacity by 2039. At Energy Northwest's Cascade project in Washington, Amazon holds rights to the first 320 MW block; in Indiana its stated intent to buy covers all 960 MW.
What Nobody Has Put a Number On
This is a feasibility study, and the press release says openly that the work may not support going ahead. Construction would only follow a final investment decision, for which there is no date. Capital cost, the size of Amazon's contribution, contract term and price, ownership and the licensing route with the NRC are all undisclosed, MGRID notes. X-energy's first plant, four units at Dow's Seadrift site on the Texas Gulf Coast, is in the final phase of NRC construction-permit review.
It closes a busy week for AEP. On 13 October Mainspring agreed to supply it with up to 1.6 GW of linear generators, and on 14 October AEP announced about US$4 billion for a 702 MW Bloom Energy fuel cell development in Wyoming that serves Google.
Two Time Scales on One Utility
Put the three announcements side by side and the gap is easy to see. Linear generators and fuel cells are being contracted for the next few years; a reactor fleet without an investment decision belongs to a later decade. The data halls that may one day buy that power will be designed, permitted and commissioned well before it exists, and each of them will still need its own standby generators for the day the incoming supply trips. A nuclear contract does not change that part of the job. Fuel that has to sit in tanks for years between real runs still needs looking after, and test hours still have to fit the air permit.