Nuclear

Dow announces manufacturing site for X-energy SMR plant
Dow announces manufacturing site for X-energy SMR plant
(A rendering of the XE-100 plant. Photo by Dow.)

Dow has announced its UCC1 Seadrift Operations manufacturing site in Texas for the location of an X-Energy small modular reactor (SMR) project.

The advanced nuclear project would provide the Seadrift site with power and steam as existing assets near their end-of-life.

Located on the Gulf of Mexico coast, Dow’s Seadrift site covers 4,700 acres and manufactures more than 4 million pounds of materials per year used across a wide variety of applications, including food packaging and preservation, footwear, wire and cable insulation, solar cell membranes, and packaging for medical and pharmaceutical products.

Dow said the project is expected to reduce the Seadrift site’s emissions by approximately 440,000 MT CO2e/year.

Dow and X-energy will now prepare and submit a construction permit application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). an important milestone to bringing the project to fruition. Construction on the 320 MW four-unit Xe-100 project is expected to begin in 2026 and be completed by the end of the decade.

The companies had previously announced plans to build X-energy’s Xe-100 SMR nuclear plant at one of its industrial sites in North America.

X-energy’s Xe-100 SMR is a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor. The company said its SMR can address a broad range of uses, including applications that currently rely on fossil fuels to produce steam and heat for processes like manufacturing, petroleum refining and hydrogen production.

X-energy was originally selected by DOE in 2020 to receive up to $1.2 billion to develop, license, build, and demonstrate an operational advanced reactor and fuel fabrication facility by the end of the decade. The company has since completed the engineering and basic design of the nuclear reactor, advanced development of a fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.