A regional utility’s plan to build a small modular nuclear reactor in southeast Washington has gotten financial backing from Amazon. The tech giant will support Energy Northwest, a consortium of 29 utility districts and municipalities, and developer X-energy to build up to 12 modular units at a Richland, Wash., site it owns and operates.
Energy Northwest has begun assembling a team of “expert contractors” to deliver the project, selecting Montreal-based AtkinsRealis last December as the owner’s engineer to support SMR design, licensing, construction and commissioning.
The consortium announced Oct. 23 that Cascade Nuclear Partners, the design-build joint venture of Kiewit Nuclear Solutions Co., Black & Veatch and Aecon, will complete the planning, design and construction of the first four units. Construction would begin in 2030, according to the utility, but no firm date for operations to begin was disclosed.
The cost of the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility project was not released; nor the amount of funding from Amazon or X-energy. The tech giant led the developer’s $700 million Series C funding last year, which included $334 million to fund “the essential early stages of the rollout,” said Geekwire, which also estimates the project’s cost could exceed $2 billion.
The state legislature’s supplemental capital budget includes $25 million to develop it, said the developer, who has also submitted a draft application to the U.S. Department of Energy for possible federal funding.
According to an Energy Northwest spokesman, the company has positioned itself as a “fast follower” of Dow Chemical’s Long Mott Generating Station in Seadrift, Texas, which also uses Energy X technology. “We are actively applying the lessons learned [its] expertise to help accelerate our own development process,” the spokesperson said.
The project will be commissioned near Energy Northwest’s 1.2 GW Columbia Generating Station, the only commercial nuclear plant in the Pacific Northwest. a spokesman said ENR that there is no firm start date for construction.
The planned SMR is smaller than a traditional nuclear reactor, with a simpler design and faster deployment to allow for a lower construction cost, Energy Northwest said. It will have an initial phase of three sections of 320 MW in the footprint of a few city blocks, with options to expand up to 12 units and a total capacity of 960 MW, the company said.
Amazon said it has invested billions in carbon-free energy, including nuclear power projects and technologies to reduce carbon emissions in data centers and other operations. X-energy’s Xe-100 design, which includes a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor that can generate 80 MW, will be used in the project, Energy Northwest said.
Kara Hurst, Amazon’s director of sustainability, said in a statement that the project is about “creating a reliable source of carbon-free energy that will support our growing digital world.”
J. Clay Sell, CEO of X-energy, said that Amazon’s support allowed the developer to accelerate the progress of the technology. It plans to bring more than 5 GW of new nuclear power to the US power grid by 2039, he said.
Amazon and X-energy also signed an agreement with South Korea’s Doosan Enerbility and Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. to accelerate the deployment of SMRs in the US
