The consortium announced on Oct. 23 that Cascade Nuclear Partners, the design-build joint venture of Kiewit Nuclear Solutions Co., Black & Veatch and Aecon will complete planning, design, and construction of the first four units. Construction would start by 2030, according to the utility, but no firm date was disclosed for operations to begin.

The cost of the the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility project was not released; nor was the funding amount from Amazon or X-energy. The tech giant led the developer's $700-million Series C funding last year, which included $334 million to fund "essential, early stages of deployment," said Geekwire, which also estimates the initial project cost could exceed $2 billion.

The state legislature’s supplemental capital budget includes $25 million to develop it, said the developer, which also has submitted a draft application to the U.S. Energy Dept. for potential federal funding.

The utility has positioned itself as a “fast follower” of Dow Chemical’s Long Mott Generating Station in Seadrift, Texas, which also uses X-energy technology, according to an Energy Northwest spokesperson. “We’re actively applying lessons learned from [its] experience to help accelerate our own development process,” the spokesperson said.  

The project will come online near Energy Northwest’s existing 1.2-GW Columbia Generating Station, the only commercial nuclear plant in the Pacific Northwest. A spokesperson told ENR that there is no firm start date for construction.

The planned SMR is smaller than a traditional nuclear reactor, with a simpler design and quicker deployment to enable lower construction cost, said Energy Northwest. It will feature an initial phase of three 320-MW sections in the footprint of “a few city blocks,” with options to expand to 12 units and a total capacity of 960 MW, said the utility.

Amazon said it has invested billions into carbon-free energy, including nuclear energy projects and technologies to reduce carbon emissions across data centers and other operations. X-energy’s Xe-100 design, which features a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor that can generate 80 MW, will be used in the project, said Energy Northwest. 

Kara Hurst, Amazon chief sustainability officer, said in a statement the project is "about creating a reliable source of carbon-free energy that will support our growing digital world.” 

J. Clay Sell, CEO of X-energy, said Amazon’s support enabled the developer to accelerate progress on the technology, noting plans to bring more than 5 GW of new nuclear energy to the U.S. grid by 2039.

Amazon and X-energy also signed an agreement with South Korea’s Doosan Enerbility and Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. to accelerate SMR deployment in the U.S.