The global web behemoth, Amazon, has unveiled early designs for a new nuclear power facility that will supply energy to its fast-growing artificial intelligence and cloud-computing operations.

The project draws directly on nuclear technology with origins in South Africa.

The reactors behind the plan are being developed by X-energy, a company whose engineers once worked on South Africa’s Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) programme. That initiative was abandoned after the South African government withdrew funding in 2010, but its design has since been reimagined and refined into X-energy’s Xe-100, a next-generation small modular reactor (SMR) that can deliver reliable, carbon-free power to industries and data centres.

The facility will be built and operated by the public utility Energy Northwest in Washington State. Plans call for up to 12 SMRs, with construction expected to start before the end of the decade and operations beginning in the early 2030s. The first phase includes four Xe-100 reactors, each producing 320 megawatts of electricity.

Amazon will buy power directly from Energy Northwest to drive Amazon Web Services (AWS), which commands roughly 30% of the global cloud-infrastructure market.

Running AWS requires vast amounts of electricity, each large data centre can consume as much power as a small South African city such as George or Nelspruit.

Last year Amazon invested $500 million in X-energy to accelerate the rollout of its SMR technology. The investment forms part of Amazon’s broader plan to develop 5 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity dedicated to its global operations.