In order to develop datacenters and meet the increasing demand for artificial intelligence and cloud computing, american technology giants have all set their sights on clean energy nuclear power generation. This has continuously boosted the concept of nuclear power stocks in the US stock market over the past month.

The news on Wednesday, October 16th, revealed that amazon has become a newly supporting technology company in the development of nuclear power, signing three related agreements in one go. This includes collaborating with electrical utilities to build small modular reactors (SMRs) and provide new sources of nuclear energy:

In amazon's second headquarters in Virginia, it signed an agreement with the local utility company Dominion Energy to invest over 0.5 billion USD to explore an SMR project near Dominion Energy's existing North Anna nuclear power station to provide power for the AWS cloud computing platform.

In 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 use amazon investment, technology from X-energy - a next-generation SMR reactor and fuel developer based in Maryland, usa.

Furthermore, amazon previously signed an agreement to establish a datacenter next to Talen Energy's nuclear facility in Pennsylvania, usa. This not only directly provides zero-carbon energy for amazon's datacenters but also helps protect existing nuclear reactors.

According to the amazon official website, signing the "Innovative Nuclear Energy Program Agreement" is to meet the growing energy demand. Investing in small modular reactors (SMRs) is part of amazon's transition plan to zero-carbon energy.

SMRs are advanced nuclear reactors with a power output approximately one-third of traditional nuclear reactors. However, their size is smaller, enabling them to be built closer to the grid. Compared to traditional nuclear reactors, SMRs have shorter construction times, quicker deployment, lower construction costs, and can be adjusted according to specific location needs. The goal is to begin supplying power in the early 2030s.

And on Monday this week, another technology 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 energy company Kairos Power, aiming to achieve 'rapid and safe' power supply for the first batch of small modular reactors by 2030, and to deploy more reactors by 2035. This deal is expected to bring 500 megawatts of 'all-weather carbon-free electricity' to the grid.

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

On Wednesday this week, driven by the news of Amazon's investment in nuclear power, US nuclear power concept stocks generally surged, although Amazon and Google briefly fell by 1%:

Oklo Inc., invested and developed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to develop fast fission power plants, briefly rose 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 transformative small modular nuclear reactor technology, surged by almost 37%, Centrus Energy Corp, providing nuclear fuel and services to the nuclear power industry, rose by over 23%, and one of the world's largest uranium producers Cameco Corp rose by 8%.

In the nuclear power ETFs, VanEck Uranium and Nuclear ETF (NLR) widened its gains to nearly 7%, and the 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, while Dominion Energy expects the region's power demand to increase by 85% over the next fifteen years. The agreement with Energy Northwest will generate approximately 320 megawatts of electricity in the first phase of the project. The alliance can choose to build up to eight additional SMRs, increasing the total generation capacity to 960 megawatts, enough to power over 0.77 million US households. X-energy, a company invested by Amazon, with its SMR technology, can support new nuclear energy projects of over 5 gigawatts.

Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon AWS, stated:

Nuclear power is a safe carbon-free energy source that can help power Amazon's operations, meet the increasing demand from customers, and assist us in achieving our climate pledge to achieve net-zero carbon emissions for all of our operations by 2040.

One of the fastest ways to address climate change is to transition our society to carbon-free energy sources, and nuclear power, being both carbon-free and scalable, has become an important investment area for Amazon. The latest partnership agreements will encourage the development of new nuclear technologies to provide new carbon-free energy.

We believe that in the coming years, there will be a need for terawatts of electricity, and wind and cecep solar energy projects alone will not be sufficient to meet these demands, making nuclear power a huge opportunity. Small Modular Reactor (SMR) technology is making real progress in being both safe and easy to build, as well as significantly smaller in size.

These SMRs will directly supply power to the grid, benefiting all devices, including some supplying datacenters, but all devices connected to the grid will benefit, not just Amazon.

On the same day, US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm expressed her delight in Amazon being the latest company to 'bring its own power' to build datacenters. She stated that the US aims to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2035, with small modular nuclear reactors being 'a critical part of the solution,' gradually replacing fossil fuel power generation, meeting the growing electricity demands of datacenters and new factories. The US Department of Energy will provide $0.9 billion to deploy more of these reactors.

However, some analysts point out that these nuclear reactors are currently under development and are not expected to supply power to the US grid until at least the 2030s, generating electricity that is a drop in the bucket compared to the annual consumption by tech giants.

For example, Google's annual environmental report shows the company consumed over 24 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity last year, where one terawatt is equivalent to 1 million megawatts. Amazon's latest partnership agreement is expected to generate over 5,000 TWh of electricity by the late 2030s, likely only a small portion of the company's total energy consumption.

According to CCTV News analysis, in recent years, a new wave of artificial intelligence has swept globally, bringing the energy consumption issue it hides into increasing focus, with large tech companies actively seeking solutions. Nuclear power is considered a more stable source of electricity than cecep solar energy and wind energy, leading many tech companies to have high expectations for it. Companies like Microsoft, OpenAI, Amazon, and others have strengthened their energy supply by directly investing in nuclear power or purchasing power from nuclear power companies.

Former Assistant Secretary of Nuclear Energy in the USA and current Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Kathryn Huff, told the media that if new clean energy is not introduced during the data center construction process, the USA may face 'grid paralysis' and will have to use more electricity produced from non-clean energy sources. However, large investors can change this situation, and the latest developments from technology giants could be a real turning point for achieving the large-scale deployment of SMR technology.

Jacopo Buongiorno, a nuclear science and engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), also agreed, stating that the nuclear energy industry needs customers who value the reliability and carbon-free characteristics of nuclear energy and are willing to pay extra costs for nuclear energy in the early stages until a batch of next-generation reactors are deployed and costs come down.

Kevin Mille, Vice President of Global Data Centers at Amazon Web Services (AWS), stated that artificial intelligence is driving a significant increase in the number of data centers and the electrical power required by the grid, saying, "We believe that advanced new nuclear power capability is indeed key and indispensable."

A month ago, on September 16th, according to CCTV News, the International Atomic Energy Agency held its 68th session, releasing the 'Forecast of Energy, Electricity and Nuclear Power by 2050', marking the fourth consecutive year of raising expectations for the prospects of nuclear power.

The International Atomic Energy Agency predicts that, under the high expectation model, by 2050, the world's nuclear power capacity will increase by 2.5 times compared to the current capacity, conforming to the global consensus to accelerate nuclear energy deployment. The International Atomic Energy Agency's forecast considers the potential life extension and power uprates of all reactors in operation, as well as planned closures and constructions in the coming decades. Around 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.