The federal government keeps underwriting X-energy's first reactor before the company has built one. The U.S. Department of Energy has told X-energy it will get up to another $1 billion in public funding for the small modular reactor project it is building with Dow in Seadrift, Texas, X-energy CEO Clay Sell said on an earnings call. That takes total public funding for the project since 2021 to up to $2.15 billion.

The funding

The new money comes through the department's Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which funds small reactor deployment through cost-shared partnerships with industry. It carries the same 50/50 cost-share requirement as the original award, Sell said. A spokesperson for the DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy confirmed X-energy will receive up to the additional $1 billion through its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program agreement, subject to the same cost-share terms.

Sell said the DOE grant award "is our largest source of revenue at our current stage of development."
Total public funding since 2021 up to $2.15 billion
New DOE funding up to $1 billion
Cost share 50/50, DOE and industry
Reactors four Xe-100 small modular reactors
Output 320 megawatts of electricity, plus industrial steam
Target start early 2030s

What the money builds

The funding supports installing four Xe-100 small modular reactors at Dow's Seadrift Operations plant. Combined, the reactors will generate 320 megawatts of electricity and produce industrial steam for the site. Dow and X-energy last year submitted a construction permit application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the project has cleared the agency's Environmental Assessment milestone. The companies aim to replace Seadrift's aging fossil-fuel energy and steam units and start operations in the early 2030s.

Seadrift is a petrochemical and plastics plant, and the reactors would supply both power and steam to it. Sell said the project is expected to be the first grid-scale advanced nuclear reactor built to serve an industrial site in North America.