Cascade Nuclear Partners (CNP), a joint venture of Canada’s Aecon and US firms Black & Veatch and Kiewit, has won a planning, design and construction contract for four small modular reactors (SMRs) at Amazon’s Cascade Advanced Energy Facility in Washington State.
Working under a progressive design-build model, the team will develop the first four of 12 planned Xe-100 SMRs, to gauge the scope, schedule and cost parameters.
Each Xe-100 SMR is a high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor that provides 80MW of electricity, 320MW in total.
The SMRs will be located adjacent to the Columbia Generating Station run by public utility company Energy Northwest.
Amazon has said the project will be used to power artificial intelligence and other digital tools, with construction creating 1,000 jobs, with 100 permanent roles available when operational.
Jean-Louis Servranckx, Aecon’s chief executive, said: “The Energy Northwest SMR development project is an exciting undertaking, and we are pleased to expand our role in delivering the next generation of nuclear plants through one of the first SMR projects in the United States.”
Construction on Cascade is due to begin by the end of the 2020s and become operational in the 2030s.
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