We got a glimpse of the future

Last month, delegates on the Made in Washington Study Mission hosted by the Clean & Prosperous Institute got a sneak peek at a major new development: Amazon announced today that they will partner with Energy Northwest to develop four Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) at the Hanford site in southeast Washington.

This follows Monday’s announcement by Google that it had signed a corporate power purchase agreement (PPA) to buy electricity from SMRs, and last month’s announcement by Microsoft that they will buy 100% of the power to be generated by a revived Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania. Artificial intelligence is driving a very real appetite for electricity. (“Hey ChatGPT, how can we generate massive megawatts of 24/7 carbon-free power?”)

A recent forecast from the Northwest Power and Conservation Council “highlights a looming conflict between an increasingly digital world and utilities’ capacity to meet surging power demand”, according to the Seattle Times. The Northwest Power Supply Adequacy Assessment cautioned that “data centers could consume as much as 4,000 average megawatts of electricity by 2029 — enough to power the entire city of Seattle five times over.”

That’s why the Legislature directed $25 million of Climate Commitment Act funds towards SMR development, and funded a work group of relevant state agencies to begin exploring pathways for permitting, siting and licensing fusion energy plants.

Washington state, long envied for our abundance of clean energy, needs more. Much more. Puget Sound Energy recently said, “it will need to buy or build 6,700 megawatts of renewable electricity by 2030, more electricity than it ever has acquired in its 150-year history.” Bonneville Power has 120 GW of power requests currently awaiting approval. Other utilities in the state are maxed out as well.

That explains why delegates on the Institute’s study mission leaned forward to listen as Greg Cullen, ​​Vice President for Energy Services and Development at Energy Northwest presented a briefing on the future of nuclear power in the Pacific Northwest. Acknowledging the role of solar and wind to boost generation across the state, Greg stressed that nuclear power needs to play a larger role, given that it can produce large amounts of carbon-free power around the clock. He then invited the delegation to tour “the only operating nuclear plant within 1,000 miles”, the Columbia Generating Station. During the tour, he pointed to acres of barren land on the Hanford site and described his vision for a field of SMRs.

Discussing pathways to increasing capacity on a carbon-free grid, Greg noted that innovations in SMRs and new technology such as TRISO-X from X-energy can help shorten construction timelines and overcome common objections to traditional, large-scale reactors. He also suggested that the upfront capital costs could be financed by long-term power purchase agreements with large private-sector power users, such as heavy industry and data centers. 

Fast-forward just a few weeks, and here we are: Energy Northwest will finance development of four SMRs with a long-term power purchase agreement with Amazon. (“Prime Power”, perhaps?)

The reactors will be constructed, owned and operated by Energy Northwest (a consortium of state public utilities), and are expected to generate roughly 320 megawatts (MW) of capacity for the first phase of the project, with the option to increase to 960 MW total – enough to power the equivalent of more than 770,000 U.S. homes. 

Amazon is also making an investment in X-energy, a leading developer of next-generation SMR reactors and fuel. X-energy’s advanced nuclear reactor design will be used in the Energy Northwest project. 

The SMR-generated power will not be delivered Next Day, however. Amazon expects the first SMR to come online by the early 2030s.