Making Tech Headlines · Page 8
Amazon's Indiana Power Plan Comes in Twelve Pieces
· New York time
Amazon has agreed with X-energy and American Electric Power to fund a proposed nuclear facility at the former Breed coal plant site in Indiana. The plan calls for 12 small reactors producing up to 960 megawatts, nearly one gigawatt, of electricity. The proposal connects a major technology company with the physical infrastructure needed to supply power. Digital services may look weightless on a screen, but the electricity behind them remains stubbornly attached to places, equipment and construction projects. Using a former coal plant site also puts the change in concrete geographic terms. This is not simply a company buying a greener adjective. It is a proposal to put a different kind of generation at an existing energy location. The agreement begins a substantial undertaking, with construction and delivery still ahead rather than electricity already flowing from finished reactors. The business analysis therefore belongs partly outside the usual technology vocabulary. Capacity and delivery matter alongside software and customer growth. The cloud, despite its name, does not float above the utility system. In Indiana, the metaphor has come down to earth and brought a plan for a dozen reactors with it.
Read this story in the full newspaper →Satire. Not factual reporting. Read the original reporting from the linked publishers.