Amazon backs X-energy and AEP plan for 960 MW nuclear plant in Indiana

Amazon funds new nuclear plant in Indiana

Amazon has signed an agreement with nuclear developer X-energy and utility American Electric Power (AEP) to fund a new nuclear energy facility in Indiana, according to The Verge. The plant would be built at the site of the defunct coal-fired Breed Generating Station in Fairbanks, Sullivan County, and is intended to supply up to 960 megawatts of carbon-free electricity to both the regional power grid and Amazon's data centers.

What has been announced

The Verge reports that no timeline for construction or operation has been disclosed. Amazon says the project "could" create 1,000 construction jobs and 100 permanent roles, a wording that reflects how early-stage the agreement is. The financial terms of the deal have not been made public.

The location carries some historical baggage. Indiana was previously home to the Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant, a famously expensive project abandoned half-finished in 1983 after $2.5 billion had already been sunk into it, with demolition ongoing since 2008. Because Amazon's terms are undisclosed, The Verge notes there is no way to compare the cost of the two undertakings.

The reactor technology

The Fairbanks facility is planned to house 12 Xe-100 small modular reactors, a design The Verge characterizes as advanced but unproven, since it is still undergoing development and licensing. The reactors can be cooled using air, water or a hybrid of the two, which Amazon says should allow deployment in water-constrained regions without adding pressure on local water supplies.

Second project with X-energy

This is the second nuclear collaboration between Amazon and X-energy. Together, the companies aim to work with regional utilities to deploy more than 5 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity in the US by 2039. Their first announced plant, the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility in Washington state, was previewed in October last year and similarly calls for 12 advanced reactors, but construction there is not expected to begin until the end of the decade.

An industry-wide shift

Amazon is not alone in this approach. Meta, Microsoft and Google are all exploring their own nuclear energy projects to power AI data centers, according to The Verge. The announcement also follows a lengthy Amazon blog post earlier this month in which the company committed to investing in energy grid infrastructure, part of an effort to counter growing negativity around data center development. Even so, the benefits of these new facilities remain years away for everyone involved, including Amazon itself.

Why it matters

The deal is a concrete illustration of how much electricity cloud and AI infrastructure now consumes. Hyperscalers have concluded that waiting for utilities to expand generation on their own is too slow, and are instead co-funding new capacity directly and tying it to their data center buildout. Nuclear is attractive because it offers large volumes of carbon-free, always-on electricity, which serves both operational needs and corporate climate commitments.

But the gap between announcement and delivery is wide. The Xe-100 reactor remains unlicensed, no construction schedule exists for the Indiana site, and even the earlier Washington project will not break ground until late this decade. That means near-term AI growth will continue to draw on existing grids while the nuclear bet plays out over a decade or more. Indiana's Marble Hill history is also a reminder that nuclear construction can fail expensively, which makes the undisclosed terms of this deal a notable omission.