
Amazon will become first IT corporation with own nuclear power plant
Amazon decided not to be petty and reached for a nuclear power plant for their AI data centers. The company acquired a large data center in the USA that will be powered directly from a park of 12 small modular X-energy Xe-100 reactors with a total capacity of 960 megawatts.
The nuclear power plant project is already on the desk of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. If it gives the green light, in 10 years Amazon’s data centers will have a dedicated source of clean nuclear energy. This is an unprecedented scale step.
Why is all this needed? Data center electricity consumption is growing exponentially. Voracious AI devours electricity at a frightening speed, and Amazon decided not to depend on general power grids. The selected Xe-100 reactors work on super-safe TRISO fuel and provide clean electricity. For the company, this is a way to get almost complete control over powering their AI clusters.
And you know what? This is a logical move. If the plan succeeds, Amazon will become the first IT corporation whose data centers are directly powered from a dedicated park of small nuclear reactors. This isn’t just about green energy – this is a new level of autonomy for cloud giants.
Imagine the scale: a company is building its own nuclear power plant to feed electricity to its neural networks. Previously corporations built offices and warehouses. Now they build nuclear power plants.