In the wake of a major service outage that disrupted millions of users, Amazon is taking an unprecedented step to ensure its digital backbone never goes dark again. Outside Richland, Washington, the tech giant has begun building its first modular nuclear power station.
For many, Amazon is synonymous with online shopping, a place to grab everything from ramen bowls to concrete mixers. Yet behind the scenes, the company’s real powerhouse is Amazon Web Services (AWS), which dominates global cloud computing with an annual revenue exceeding $123 billion (as of 2025). When AWS experiences an outage, as it recently did impacting over 1,000 companies, the ripple effects are global. It’s precisely this vulnerability that’s driving Amazon and other tech leaders to explore nuclear energy as a reliable, round-the-clock, zero-emission power source.
But Amazon’s announcement goes beyond a simple energy solution. It marks another leap toward Generation IV nuclear technology, a rapidly developing field designed to meet the exponential energy demands of the digital age. The company’s upcoming project, called the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility, will deploy X-Energy’s Xe-100 Small Modular Reactor (SMR) near the existing Columbia Generating Station in Washington State.
The Xe-100 represents a new class of High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors (HTGRs) fueled by TRISO-X particles tiny grains of uranium encased in protective layers of carbon and ceramic, bundled into spherical pebbles. These pebbles are fed through a hopper into the reactor, where they sustain a self-regulating fission reaction cooled by helium gas. The heat produced drives turbines to generate electricity, while used fuel is collected efficiently at the bottom of the vessel.
Although each Xe-100 reactor generates only 80 megawatts of electricity (MWe), its modular design allows for scalability and mass production. Unlike conventional nuclear plants that demand extensive infrastructure and high costs, these compact units can be assembled in factories and transported by truck, reducing land use and construction expenses.
Even more notably, SMR facilities can scale up or down depending on demand adding modules for more power or removing them for decommissioning. This modularity makes disposal safer and simpler, as each reactor can be removed in full once it’s powered down and defueled.
Amazon plans to start construction on the Cascade facility by the end of this decade, with operations expected in the 2030s. The site will initially house four reactors generating 320 MWe, with expansion potential up to 12 reactors producing 960 MWe. If successful, the company envisions rolling out 5 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear power across the U.S. by 2039 enough to power approximately 3.8 million homes.
As Kara Hurst, Amazon’s Chief Sustainability Officer, put it: “This project isn’t just about new technology; it’s about creating a reliable source of carbon-free energy that will support our growing digital world.”
She emphasized the broader vision, saying the SMR initiative represents “a positive impact on both the environment and local communities.”
Source: Amazon