Amazon Funds 12 Small Nuclear Reactors to Deliver 1 Gigawatt at Indiana Coal Plant Site

TL;DR

• Amazon and X-energy will deploy 12 Xe-100 small modular reactors at the Merom coal plant site in Sullivan County, Indiana, delivering nearly 1 gigawatt of carbon-free power.
• The project is designed to directly power Amazon's growing AI data centers in Indiana while feeding reliable baseload electricity to the grid.
• The coal-to-nuclear conversion is expected to create thousands of construction jobs, preserve long-term plant jobs, and become a national model for repurposing fossil sites.

A Coal Plant's Second Life

Amazon is going nuclear in Indiana - in a big way.

The tech giant and advanced reactor developer X-energy have signed a new deal to build 12 small modular nuclear reactors at the site of a former coal plant in western Indiana, a project that will generate nearly 1 gigawatt of clean, around-the-clock electricity.

The deployment will use X-energy's Xe-100 high-temperature gas-cooled reactors at the Merom Generating Station in Sullivan County, a 1,080-megawatt coal facility operated by Hallador Energy's Hoosier Energy that is slated for retirement. Instead of demolishing the plant's grid connection, cooling water, workforce, and transmission infrastructure, the partners will reuse it for nuclear.

Each Xe-100 module produces 80 megawatts of electricity. Combined, the 12-module plant will deliver about 960 megawatts - enough to power more than 840,000 homes, or a massive cluster of AI data centers.

Amazon will provide funding support for development and has secured rights to the power output to support its carbon-free energy goals and expanding cloud operations in the Midwest.

Why Big Tech Is Betting Big on Nuclear

For Amazon, the math is simple: AI needs staggering amounts of power, and solar and wind alone can't deliver it 24/7.

The company's Amazon Web Services division is racing to build hyperscale data centers across Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois to handle generative AI, with single campuses now drawing as much power as entire cities. In Indiana alone, Amazon has committed more than $11 billion to data center campuses in St. Joseph County and elsewhere.

Nuclear offers what tech companies crave most: firm, carbon-free baseload power that doesn't depend on weather, doesn't emit CO2, and can run at over 95% capacity factor for 60 years.

Amazon is not alone. Microsoft has moved to restart Three Mile Island, Google has backed Kairos Power SMRs, and Meta has solicited up to 4 gigawatts of nuclear. But the X-energy deal in Indiana is one of the largest SMR commitments by a tech company to date, signaling a shift from minority investments to full-scale project deployment.

Inside the Xe-100 Technology

Unlike traditional giant light-water reactors, X-energy's Xe-100 is designed to be small, modular, and inherently safe.

Each reactor uses TRISO-X fuel - poppy-seed-sized uranium particles coated in ceramic layers that can withstand extreme heat without melting. Helium gas cools the core instead of water, allowing it to operate at much higher temperatures, around 750 degrees Celsius.

That high heat makes it more efficient and potentially useful for industrial applications beyond electricity, from hydrogen production to process heat.

Crucially for Indiana, the Xe-100 is designed for factory fabrication and rapid on-site assembly. X-energy says multiple 4-pack units can be built in phases, letting Amazon bring power online incrementally as data center demand grows rather than waiting a decade for a single gigawatt-scale reactor.

X-energy is already building its first Xe-100 plant with Dow Chemical in Seadrift, Texas, and its TRISO fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, backed by the Department of Energy's Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program.

What It Means for Jobs and the Grid

For Sullivan County and the Wabash Valley, the project promises an economic lifeline.

Coal plant closures have cost rural Indiana hundreds of well-paying jobs and millions in tax base. State leaders say the coal-to-nuclear transition will flip that script, with early estimates pointing to up to 2,500 construction jobs at peak, plus around 300 permanent high-paying operations jobs - many of which can be filled by retrained coal plant workers.

Reusing the Merom site also solves a major grid bottleneck. The Midwest grid operator MISO has warned of looming capacity shortfalls as coal retires and data center load surges. By plugging nearly 1 gigawatt of firm power into existing switchyards and transmission lines, the project avoids years of interconnection delays and helps stabilize electricity prices for all Hoosiers.

Local unions and Purdue University, which is partnering on workforce training for advanced nuclear technicians, have already voiced support.

The Road Ahead for Coal-to-Nuclear

The deal still needs to clear federal hurdles, including Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing, detailed site characterization, and community engagement. X-energy and Amazon are targeting early site work in 2027-2028, with first power expected in the early 2030s pending approvals.

Indiana lawmakers have laid the groundwork, passing legislation in 2022 and 2024 to allow SMRs and create a favorable environment for coal-to-nuclear conversions. More than 20 retired and retiring coal sites in Indiana have been identified nationally as suitable for advanced reactors due to their water access and grid infrastructure.

If successful, Merom could become the blueprint for dozens of similar transitions across the Rust Belt - turning yesterday's coal plants into tomorrow's AI powerhouses, without building on untouched land.

For Amazon, it's a bet that the future of the cloud will be powered not just by sun and wind, but by atoms.

AndroGuider Team

Articles written by the AndroGuider team. We try to make them thorough and informational while being easy to read.