The project targets 12 of X-energy's Xe-100 small modular reactors, compact reactors that are still in development and licensing. Amazon says they can be cooled by air, water or a hybrid of both, which it argues should allow deployment in water-constrained regions without adding to local water demand. No construction or operation timeline has been announced, and Amazon says the plant "could" create 1,000 construction jobs and 100 permanent roles.

Indiana has seen a nuclear project stall before: the Marble Hill plant was abandoned half-finished in 1983 after $2.5 billion had been spent, and demolition has been ongoing since 2008. Terms of Amazon's Fairbanks agreement have not been disclosed, so no cost comparison is possible.

This is the second nuclear collaboration between Amazon and X-energy, following the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility in Washington, which Amazon previewed in October last year and where construction is not expected to begin until the end of this decade. The companies' broader goal is to work with regional utilities to deploy more than 5 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity in the US by 2039, part of a wider push by tech firms including Meta, Microsoft and Google to power AI data centers with nuclear energy.