Big Tech backs next‑gen nuclear

A data center used to shop for electricity the way an office tower does. Now Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are trying to secure nuclear power years in advance, the way an airline locks in jet fuel. (reuters.com) The trigger is artificial intelligence, because training and running large models packs thousands of power-hungry chips into buildings that need steady electricity every hour of the day. Utilities can add solar farms quickly, but a cloud company cannot run a data center on sunshine at noon and hope for wind after dark. (reuters.com) That is why the new deals focus on nuclear plants that can run for months between refueling and deliver power around the clock. The pitch from reactor developers is not just low carbon electricity, but electricity that behaves like a factory machine that never shuts off. (ieeexplore.ieee.org) Google moved first in October 2024, when it signed an agreement with Kairos Power for up to 500 megawatts from a fleet of small modular reactors, with the first unit targeted for 2030 and more deployments through 2035. Kairos says it will build and operate the plants and sell Google the power under long-term contracts. (blog.google) Amazon went further into the financing side in October 2024, anchoring a roughly $500 million funding round for X-energy. X-energy said the money would help finish reactor design work, move licensing forward, and expand fuel manufacturing in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. (x-energy.com) Amazon also signed separate agreements tied to more than 600 megawatts of potential projects in Washington state and Virginia. One of those arrangements links X-energy with Energy Northwest, which already runs nuclear projects and gives the reactor company a customer, a site pathway, and an operator in one package. (aboutamazon.com) Meta has not picked a reactor partner yet, but in December 2024 it opened a request for proposals for 1 to 4 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity in the United States starting in the early 2030s. One gigawatt is roughly the output of a traditional large reactor, so Meta is effectively shopping for the equivalent of one to four big plants. (sustainability.atmeta.com) Microsoft chose a nearer-term route in September 2024 by signing a 20-year power purchase agreement with Constellation Energy tied to the restart of Unit 1 at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, now renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center. Constellation has said the reactor could return in 2027, although transmission delays have become a new risk. (world-nuclear-news.org, world-nuclear-news.org) The reason these companies are signing so early is that most advanced reactors still do not exist at commercial scale. Kairos received a United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission construction permit for its Hermes test reactor in December 2023, and TerraPower received a construction permit for its Natrium project in Wyoming in 2025, which shows how much of this buildout is still in the demonstration stage. (nrc.gov, energy.gov) That is what the tech money changes. A startup reactor company usually has to convince investors, regulators, utilities, fuel suppliers, and future customers one by one, but a hyperscale buyer can show up with cash and a decade-long power contract and solve several of those problems at once. (reuters.com) The quiet shift is that electricity is no longer a background bill for the biggest cloud companies. If artificial intelligence keeps pushing data center demand higher, access to firm power could decide where the next wave of computing gets built, and which reactor designs finally make it out of the prototype era. (reuters.com)