Amazon is funding a new nuclear plant in Indiana
Amazon is funding a new nuclear plant in Indiana
亚马逊正在资助印第安纳州的一座新核电站。
The proposed nuclear plant would provide 960 megawatts to power the grid — and Amazon’s data centers.
拟建的核电站将提供 960 兆瓦的电力，用于为电网和亚马逊的数据中心供电。
Amazon has signed an agreement with X-energy and American Electric Power (AEP) to fund the building of a new nuclear energy facility in Indiana. The proposed plant, which would replace the now defunct coal-fueled Breed Generating Station in Fairbanks, Sullivan County, aims to provide up to 960 megawatts of carbon-free energy for both the regional power grid and Amazon’s data centers.
亚马逊已与 X-energy 和美国电力公司 (AEP) 签署协议，资助在印第安纳州建设一座新的核能设施。该拟建电站将取代位于沙利文县费尔班克斯现已停用的布里德燃煤发电站，旨在为区域电网和亚马逊的数据中心提供高达 960 兆瓦的无碳能源。
No timeline for construction or operation has been announced for the facility, which Amazon says “could” create 1,000 construction jobs and 100 permanent roles. The facility in Indiana is targeting to build 12 Xe-100 SMR’s, an advanced (but unproven) reactor that’s still undergoing development and licensing. These reactors can be cooled using either air, water, or a hybrid solution of both, which Amazon says should allow them to be deployed in water-constrained regions without impacting water demand in local communities.
该设施尚未公布建设或运营的时间表，亚马逊称其“可能”创造 1,000 个建筑岗位和 100 个长期职位。印第安纳州的该设施计划建造 12 台 Xe-100 小型模块化反应堆（SMR），这是一种尚处于开发和许可阶段的先进（但未经证实）反应堆。亚马逊表示，这些反应堆可以使用空气、水或两者的混合方案进行冷却，这将使它们能够在缺水地区部署，而不会影响当地社区的用水需求。
Indiana also happens to be home to a famously expensive and uncompleted energy project called the Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant. It was abandoned half-finished in 1983 after $2.5 billion had already been sunk into it, and has been under continued demolition since 2008. Terms for Amazon’s agreement in Fairbanks haven’t been disclosed, so we can’t compare the cost between the facilities.
印第安纳州恰好也是一个名为“大理石山核电站”的著名昂贵且未完工能源项目的所在地。该项目在 1983 年投入 25 亿美元后被半途废弃，并自 2008 年以来一直处于持续拆除状态。亚马逊在费尔班克斯协议的条款尚未披露，因此我们无法比较这两个设施之间的成本。
This marks the second nuclear energy project that Amazon and X-energy are collaborating on, with the collective goal of working with regional utilities to deploy more than 5 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity in the US by 2039. In October last year, Amazon shared an early preview of its first planned nuclear plant, the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility in Washington. That project is similarly set to build 12 advanced reactors and create local jobs, but construction isn’t expected to start until the end of this decade.
这是亚马逊与 X-energy 合作的第二个核能项目，其共同目标是与区域公用事业公司合作，到 2039 年在美国部署超过 5 吉瓦的新核能容量。去年 10 月，亚马逊分享了其首个计划核电站——华盛顿州 Cascade 先进能源设施的早期预览。该项目同样计划建造 12 台先进反应堆并创造当地就业机会，但预计要到本十年末才会开始施工。
Amazon is one of several tech companies, including Meta, Microsoft, and Google, that are exploring their own nuclear energy projects to power AI data centers. Investing in energy grid infrastructure was also one of the commitments that Amazon outlined in a lengthy blog post earlier this month that aimed to sway some of the growing negativity around data center projects, though it’ll be many years before anyone — including Amazon — can reap the benefits of these new facilities.
亚马逊是包括 Meta、微软和谷歌在内的多家探索自身核能项目以驱动人工智能数据中心的科技公司之一。投资能源电网基础设施也是亚马逊本月初在一篇长篇博文中概述的承诺之一，旨在缓解围绕数据中心项目日益增长的负面情绪，尽管包括亚马逊在内的任何人要从这些新设施中获益还需要许多年。