Amazon and Google compete to invest in nuclear-powered data centers, US stocks related to nuclear power concept surge

In order to develop data centers and meet the growing demand for artificial intelligence and cloud computing, American tech giants have set their sights on clean energy nuclear power to generate electricity, driving up the concept stocks of nuclear power in the US over the past month.

News on Wednesday, October 16th, revealed that Amazon has become a new tech company supporting the development of nuclear energy, signing three related agreements in one go, especially in cooperation with power companies to build small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) and provide new sources of nuclear energy:

At Amazon's second headquarters in Virginia, it signed an agreement with local utility company Dominion Energy to invest over $500 million to explore the development of an SMR project near Dominion Energy's existing North Anna nuclear power station to power the cloud computing platform AWS.

At Amazon's first headquarters in Washington state, it reached an agreement with the state utility alliance Energy Northwest to fund the development, licensing, and construction of four advanced SMRs. These reactors will utilize Amazon's investment, technology from X-energy, a next-generation SMR reactor and fuel developer based in Maryland, USA.

Additionally, Amazon previously signed an agreement to establish a data center next to Talen Energy's nuclear facility in Pennsylvania, not only providing carbon-free energy directly to Amazon's data center but also helping to protect existing nuclear reactors.

According to Amazon's official website, signing the "Innovative Nuclear Energy Project Agreement" is to meet the growing energy demand, and investing in small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) is part of Amazon's transition plan to carbon-free energy.

SMR is an advanced nuclear reactor that generates about one-third of the power of traditional nuclear reactors, but with a smaller size. Therefore, it can be built closer to the grid. Compared to traditional nuclear reactors, SMRs have shorter construction times, can be put into operation faster, have lower construction costs, and can be adjusted according to specific location needs. The goal is to start supplying power in the early 2030s.

On Monday of this week, another tech giant, Google, also announced that due to the high power consumption of data centers, it has signed a power purchase agreement with the US nuclear power company Kairos Power to strive to achieve "rapid and safe" power supply for the first batch of small modular reactors by 2030 and deploy more reactors by 2035, bringing 500 megawatts of "all-weather carbon-free electricity" to the grid.

On September 20th, the leading nuclear reactor operator in the US, Constellation Energy, announced that it is restarting the closed Three Mile Island nuclear power plant and is expected to resume power generation services by 2028 to meet the power supply needs of Microsoft's data centers. This news had previously driven up North American uranium mining stocks and nuclear energy concept stocks on that day.

This Wednesday, the news of Amazon's investment in nuclear power energy has driven up the concept stocks of nuclear power in the US, However, Amazon and Google briefly fell by 1%:

Oklo Inc., which is invested by Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and is developing fast-fission power plants, surged nearly 44% to a daily high of $16.77, approaching the intraday historical high of $18.80 set on May 10th.

NuScale Power Corp, dedicated to developing revolutionary small modular nuclear reactor technology, saw a maximum increase of nearly 37%. Centrus Energy Corp, providing nuclear fuel and services to the nuclear power industry, rose over 23%. Cameco Corp, one of the world's largest uranium producers, rose by 8%.

In the nuclear power ETF sector, VanEck Uranium and Nuclear ETF (NLR) expanded by nearly 7%, while Range Nuclear Renaissance Index ETF (NUKZ) also rose by over 7%.

Amazon stated that the SMR development agreement signed with Dominion Energy will bring at least 300 megawatts of power to the Virginia region. Dominion Energy expects the region's electricity demand to increase by 85% over the next fifteen years. An agreement with Energy Northwest will generate approximately 320 megawatts of power in the first phase of the project. The alliance can choose to build up to eight additional SMRs, increasing the total generating capacity to 960 megawatts, enough to power over 770,000 American households. X-energy, a company invested in by Amazon, has SMR technology that can support new nuclear projects of over 5 gigawatts.

Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon AWS, stated:

"Nuclear energy is a safe, carbon-free energy source that can help power Amazon's operations, meet the growing needs of customers, and help us achieve our climate commitment of net-zero carbon emissions for all operations by 2040.

One of the fastest ways to address climate change is to transition our society to carbon-free energy, and nuclear energy is both carbon-free and scalable, making it a significant investment area for Amazon. The latest partnership agreement will encourage the construction of new nuclear technologies to provide new carbon-free energy.

We believe that in the coming years, several gigawatts of power will be needed, and wind and solar projects are not sufficient to meet these demands, hence nuclear energy presents a huge opportunity. SMR technology is also making real progress in being both safe and easy to build, as well as much smaller in size.

These SMRs will directly supply power to the grid, so they will power all devices, some of which will supply data centers, but all devices connected to the grid will benefit, not just Amazon."

On the same day, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm expressed her delight that Amazon has become the latest company to "bring its own power" to build data centers. She stated that the U.S.' goal is to achieve 100% clean power by 2035, and small modular nuclear reactors will be a "critical part of solving this challenge," gradually phasing out fossil fuel power generation while meeting the increasing power needs of data centers and new factories. The U.S. Department of Energy will provide $900 million to deploy more reactorsOn the other hand, some analysis points out that these nuclear reactors are currently under development and are not expected to provide electricity to the U.S. grid until the 2030s, and the electricity generated is just a drop in the bucket compared to the annual consumption of tech giants.

For example, Google's annual environmental report shows that the company consumed over 24 terawatt-hours of electricity last year, with one terawatt being equivalent to 1 million megawatts. Amazon's latest partnership agreement is expected to generate over 5000 megawatts of electricity by the late 2030s, likely only a small part of the company's total energy consumption.

Previously, according to CCTV News analysis, in recent years, a new wave of artificial intelligence has swept the globe, with the hidden energy consumption issue becoming increasingly prominent. Large tech companies are seeking solutions. Nuclear energy is seen as a more stable source of power than solar and wind energy, leading many tech companies to have high hopes for it. Companies like Microsoft, OpenAI, and Amazon are strengthening their energy supply by directly investing in nuclear power or purchasing electricity from nuclear power companies.

Kathryn Huff, former Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy and current Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told the media that without introducing new clean energy sources in data center construction, the U.S. could face a "grid collapse" and be forced to use more electricity produced from non-clean sources. However, large investors can change this situation, and the latest developments from tech giants could be a "turning point" for truly achieving the scale deployment of SMR technology.

Jacopo Buongiorno, Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT, also agrees that the nuclear industry needs customers who value the reliability and carbon-free characteristics of nuclear energy and are willing to pay extra costs in the early stages until a batch of next-generation reactors are deployed and costs decrease.

Kevin Mille, Vice President of Global Data Centers at Amazon AWS, stated that artificial intelligence is driving a significant increase in the number of data centers and the power needed by the grid. "We believe that advanced new nuclear power capacity is indeed key and essential."

On September 16, a month ago, according to CCTV News, the International Atomic Energy Agency held its 68th General Conference and released the "Energy, Electricity, and Nuclear Power Outlook to 2050," raising nuclear power prospects for the fourth consecutive year:

The International Atomic Energy Agency predicts that under the high scenario model, by 2050, the world's nuclear power capacity will increase by 2.5 times compared to the current capacity, in line with the global consensus to accelerate nuclear deployment. The forecast considers potential life extensions and power upgrades of all operating reactors, as well as projects planned for closure and construction in the coming decades. About 30 countries are considering or advancing plans to introduce nuclear power into their energy mix, while other countries are expanding existing nuclear power plants and extending their lifetimes