Amazon announced on Wednesday that it has entered into partnerships with three energy companies that will build small, new-generation nuclear reactors to meet some of the technology giant's huge electricity needs.
The Seattle-based group is following in the footsteps of Google, which unveiled a similar contract with start-up Kairos Power on Monday.
The three agreements relate to small modular reactors, SMRs, which are considered safer and less expensive than conventional power plants.
SMRs generally have a capacity of less than 400 megawatts, compared with around 1,000 for standard reactors, but some of the players in this emerging sector are proposing to install several of them on a single site.
Amazon will invest directly in the start-up X-energy,through a $500-million financing round that includes other players, notably the Citadel investment company, according to a press release.
At the same time, Amazon has signed an agreement with Energy Northwest, a public utility that covers almost the energy needs of the entire state of Washington, where the group founded by Jeff Bezos is headquartered.
The third partnership involves Dominion Energy, which will be working on the construction of an SMR on the North Anna site in Virginia, where there is already a conventional power plant.
The increase in Amazon's electricity needs is not so much linked to its e-commerce platform as to its cloud computing business, in which it is the world leader.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), its cloud subsidiary, owns a large number of data centres, whose servers consume huge amounts of energy.
The contract calls for the first Kairos SMR to be commissioned by 2030.
