Amazon Web Services (AWS) has expanded its contract with utility company Talen Energy to boost the supply of nuclear energy for an AWS data center in Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna valley. The move is one of several instances of cloud hyperscalers adopting nuclear energy to supply the greater power demands of AI-based data centers.
The AWS-Talen deal is long term: they have signed a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) that supplies 1,920-MW of energy to AWS until 2042, with an option to extend the contract. Talen is forecast to earn $18 billion in revenue over the contract’s initial 17-year period.
This PPA is written to amend AWS’s current 300-MW delivery agreement, and will shift the terms of that earlier agreement to a “front of the meter” (FTM) model. This FTM approach means AWS is purchasing energy from the larger power grid instead of purchasing power from a single source routed to its data facility. The advantage of the FTM technique is that it will not require approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, avoiding the legal and regulatory issues that had slowed down the earlier agreement.
Still, AWS and Talen will partner to develop more energy for AWS data centers. First, they will investigate options to build small modular reactors for more sources of nuclear power. Additionally, the two companies will work on increasing the output of Talen’s current Susquehanna plant using engineering, software and hardware upgrades, a process known as uprating.
The nuclear energy from the existing Talen plant will need to time to reach capacity. AWS has contracted with Talen to receive from 840 to 1200 MW by 2029, and 1680 to 1920 MW in 2032.
Amazon recently announced it will spend $20 billion constructing data facilities in Pennsylvania. AWS Vice President of Global Data Centers Kevin Miller said that Amazon is proud to help Pennsylvania advance AI innovation. “That’s why we’re making the largest private sector investment in state history,” he said, noting that the agreement will “bring 1,250 high-skilled jobs and economic benefits to the state, while also collaborating with Talen Energy to help power our infrastructure with carbon-free energy.”
Amazon’s deal with Talen is only one of a handful of recent deals that leading cloud and AI companies have made with nuclear energy vendors to supply data centers. The driving force here is the voracious power consumption of artificial intelligence computing, which demands far greater energy than pre-AI data facilities.
Meta in early June signed a 20-year contract with Constellation Energy to receive 1,100-MW of electricity from Constellation’s nuclear plant in Clinton, Illinois, which is the plant’s complete output. The contract is set to start in 2027.
In 2024, Microsoft signed a 20-year contract with Constellation that provides the complete energy output of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, located near Middleton, Pennsylvania. The plant, infamous in the history of nuclear power, suffered a partial nuclear meltdown in 1979 and has been shuttered—but the reactor that will be reopened for Microsoft was not part of the meltdown.
