The key facts

  • The NRC approved a permit for four Xe-100 reactors, each producing 80 MW of electricity and 200 MW of heat, at Dow's site in Texas
  • X-energy calls it the first permit for an advanced reactor at an industrial facility in the US; operation is expected in the early 2030s
  • The Union of Concerned Scientists said the NRC deferred consideration of critical safety issues

Permit granted

X-energy announced that the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has approved the construction permit application for four Xe-100 reactors at Dow's chemical plant in Texas. Each reactor is rated for 80 MW of electricity and 200 MW of thermal power. According to the company, this is the first approval of an advanced nuclear reactor at an industrial site in the US.

Betting on small modular reactors

The American nuclear industry is pinning its hopes on small modular reactors (SMRs): shrinking the reactor, proponents argue, should speed up construction and cut costs, although these advantages remain unproven. No SMR is operating in the US yet, and according to X-energy, Dow's reactors will not come online before the early 2030s. The company claims its design, which uses helium blown through uranium fuel pebbles, is safer than many existing reactors, but the Union of Concerned Scientists disputed that claim as well as the speed of the permitting. Edwin Lyman, the organization's director of nuclear power safety, said the NRC 'achieved this by deferring consideration of critical safety issues to a later date — issues that should have been fully resolved before construction was approved.'

Investment context

The industry is benefiting from demand from data center operators looking for any source of electricity: Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund led a $500 million Series C-1 round, and Amazon itself has committed to purchasing 5 GW of capacity from the startup. X-energy's IPO in April raised $1 billion, but investor optimism has since faded: the shares trade at less than half their offering price, and the permit approval only made up for last week's losses. The first reactors are likely to be expensive, since nuclear plants are costly to build and take years to complete.