Amazon shares a ‘first look’ at the new nuclear facility

Amazon shared some of them New details About its plans to help spread more nuclear power throughout Washington state, where the company is headquartered.

About a year ago, Amazon Announce that deal with Energy Northwest, a consortium of Washington utilities, to support the development of up to 12 advanced reactors by the early 2030s. Once the project is completed, Amazon will have the right to purchase electricity from the first 320 megawatt phase of the project. The additional capacity will be open for Amazon and local facilities to use.

What’s different about these reactors is that they are small and modular, which should make them cheaper and easier to deploy than the current US fleet of nuclear power plants. Amazon shared several rendering photos today of what the first factory outside of Richland, Washington, may look like. The project will be called Cascade Advanced Energy Facility, and will include three sections with a combined capacity of 960 megawatts, enough electricity to power 770,000 homes in the United States. While an old-school reactor of roughly the same capacity might spread across more than a square mile of land, according to Amazon, the Cascade project is expected to cover just a few city blocks.

Today’s Amazon blog post says the Cascade facility should create about 100 permanent jobs, in addition to more than 1,000 construction jobs. Consider these the next generation Reactors It is still under development and must go through a permitting process, and construction is not expected to begin until the end of the decade.