AEP says Indiana nuclear decision could come in 2030 at the earliest

The 28 October comments came after AEP and X-energy announced on 19 October that they had agreed to evaluate the project. The joint development agreement is not final, the companies said.

Amazon has not disclosed how much it will put into the Indiana project. It says it is "investing billions in nuclear energy projects" overall.

If built, AEP would own and operate the plant. Amazon would provide development funding and intends to buy the power under a long-term contract that AEP says would cover the plant's costs and shield its other customers. Neither company has published a cost or a construction date. The companies count more than 1,000 construction jobs and more than 100 permanent positions for the county. The reactors would connect to the public grid and also supply Amazon data centers.

What the 19 October agreement says

AEP and X-energy announced on 19 October that they had agreed to evaluate the retired Breed Generating Station in Sullivan County, Indiana, as a potential site. The coal plant there closed in the 1990s. The layout calls for 12 Xe-100 reactors in three blocks of four, each block rated at 320 MW, for 960 MW in total. Bill Fehrman, AEP's chairman, president and chief executive, said the agreements give the utility "all necessary capital protections and financial safeguards."

Each Xe-100 is rated at 80 MW, cooled with helium and fuelled with TRISO particles. No commercial small modular reactor supplying electricity is operating in the United States.

X-energy's first project, four reactors at Dow's Seadrift site southeast of Houston, has not broken ground. Its construction permit is in the final phases of Nuclear Regulatory Commission review. Amazon led X-energy's $700 million Series C-1 round in October 2024, supporting reactor design and licensing and the first phase of a TRISO-X fuel plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. X-energy says its TRISO fuel resists extreme temperatures and the design aims to limit reliance on active safety systems in some accident scenarios.

X-energy listed on Nasdaq in April at $23 a share. The stock rose 27% on its first day and has fallen nearly two-thirds since.

It gained about 10% in premarket trading on the Indiana news, though shares were down less than 2% at the time of publication.

Indiana Michigan Power expects state peak demand to climb from 2,800 MW to more than 7,000 MW by 2030, Utility Dive reported, citing a decision by Indiana's utility regulators. Data centers are the main driver of that growth. Indiana is the second project under the Amazon and X-energy collaboration, after Cascade in Washington state, planned at 12 reactors and 960 MW starting with a 320 MW block. The two companies aim for more than 5 GW of new US nuclear capacity by 2039. Amazon's Climate Pledge target is net zero carbon across its operations by 2040. Amazon has a data center campus near New Carlisle, Indiana.

Andre Woodson, Amazon's regional field communications manager, said the plant would support "the infrastructure behind the digital tools millions of American depend on every day."

What happens next

The timeline depends on X-energy delivering its first plant at Seadrift. Experts say mass manufacturing often takes about a decade to deliver cost benefits, and the most recent US nuclear plants ran over budget and slipped schedule. AEP has said such capital protections are essential for any nuclear project to move forward. The plant goes to construction only if development reaches a final investment decision, which Fehrman put at 2030 at the earliest.