US utility American Electric Power and X-energy have signed a joint development agreement to evaluate a potential 960 MW project at a former coal plant site in Sullivan County, Indiana.
Tech giant Amazon is to support the project's development through a funding agreement and through a long-term power purchase agreement "covering the costs of the facility and its operations for the duration of the contract".
X-energy's Xe-100 small modular reactor provides 80 MW of energy - if the development project reaches a final investment decision and moves forward with it envisages 12 of these units being arranged in three groups of four.
Sullivan County recently became part of the Indiana Advanced Nuclear Ready Communities Program - the proposed site being evaluated is the former site of I&M's Breed Generating Station. If it goes ahead it is likely to create about 1,000 construction jobs and 100 permanent jobs.
Bill Fehrman, Chairman and CEO of American Electric Power (AEP), said: "Advanced nuclear energy has the potential to provide dependable power for over half a century while supporting economic growth in our communities. With this development plan, we are working to bring together the resources to help meet unprecedented growth in energy demand with reliable baseload power while protecting affordability for existing customers."
Josh Weissman, VP of Data Center Infrastructure Capacity Delivery at Amazon, said: "We are committed to serving the needs of our customers and achieving our Climate Pledge goal to be net-zero carbon across our operations by 2040. This collaboration with AEP and X-energy would enable us to make progress on both while ensuring that Indiana's communities benefit. Together, we're looking to develop nearly a gigawatt of carbon-free power for the regional grid and pay our full costs without passing them to others. This project would also create jobs and generate tax revenues to benefit Hoosier communities for decades to come."
J Clay Sell, CEO of X-energy, said: "This effort pairs AEP's 50 years of excellence in nuclear operations with the world-class expertise of Amazon to chart a new course for Indiana's energy future, powered by our Xe-100 small modular reactor. Together, we're working to advance a clean, safe, reliable solution to meet growing energy demand and benefit Indiana and its communities for generations to come."
Background
The Indiana project would be the second one under the 2024 collaboration that saw Amazon taking a stake in X-energy and the two announcing a goal of adding more than 5 GW of new nuclear capacity to the US grid by 2039. The first scheme is at the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility in Washington state. Amazon says it will be "the first offtake customer" of these projects, "providing the demand signal that makes these projects viable and accelerating the path to new carbon-free power for the grid".
Amazon has signed a US government-led pledge "to pay the full electricity costs of serving our data centres, including paying for additional infrastructure, without passing costs to others", and says that increased revenue from large customers like itself is driving down utility bills.
The Xe-100 is a pebble bed high-temperature gas reactor capable of a thermal output of 200 MW (80 MW electrical). It uses fuel made from robust TRISO (tri-structural isotropic) fuel particles. TRISO fuel is composed of small spheres of enriched uranium that are coated with multiple layers of carbon and ceramic materials, forming a robust shell that can withstand extremely high temperatures without melting.
Optimised as a four-unit plant delivering 320 MWe, the reactor can provide baseload power to an electricity system or use its thermal output to support industrial applications with high-pressure, high-temperature steam.
The first deployment of the Xe-100 is planned for Dow's Seadrift site on the Texas Gulf Coast, to supply both power and high-temperature heat to industrial-scale operations.
The main feedstock for fuel that will be manufactured by X-energy's TRISO-X subsidiary is high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU. In February, TRISO-X received a 40-year Special Nuclear Material Licence from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, enabling it to commercially manufacture fuel using HALEU under a single licence. HALEU contains between 5% and 20% of fissile uranium-235 - a higher enrichment than that found in typical uranium fuel used in today's operating commercial reactors, which contains between 3.5% and 5% U-235.