Not your parents’ nuclear: X-Energy’s ‘meltdown-proof’ reactors poised to power more of U.S. grid

Nuclear power is about to grow significantly in the U.S., led by a handful of companies that have redesigned reactors to be smaller, safer and quicker to build.

X-Energy, headquartered in the D.C. suburb of Rockville, Maryland, plans to have the first-of-its-kind, small modular reactor up and running on the Texas Gulf Coast early in the next decade.

“We expect to get the construction permit in the fourth quarter of 2026, which puts us in position to start construction in the first half of 2027,” Clay Sell, X-Energy CEO, told The Washington Times.

It will begin a major revival of nuclear’s role in the nation’s power grid, a share which has largely stalled at around 19% after older plants were shuttered and new construction wound down due to safety concerns in the 1980s. There are currently 93 nuclear reactors operating in 54 power plants across the U.S.

They are all, on average, about four decades old.

X-Energy plans to jump-start construction of brand new reactors in the next few years. But their reactors don’t copy the technology and design of older models like Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island, where an accident caused a partial meltdown in 1979. The mishap stirred a public backlash against nuclear power that has gone on for decades.

“Our reactor is meltdown-proof,” Mr. Sell told The Times. “It’s several orders of magnitude safer than the existing technologies that are deployed around the world.”

X-Energy’s plans are part of a wider Trump administration strategy to deploy much more nuclear power over the next two-and-a-half decades. It comes amid a shift in public opinion about nuclear energy: Gallup found a near-record number of Americans — 61% — favor nuclear energy, according to an April poll.

That’s up from a low of 44% in Gallup’s 2016 poll on nuclear energy.

“I spend a lot of time engaging communities in which we operate. And there’s a generational shift,” Mr. Sell said. “There are no emissions. It’s on 24/7, it’s a small plant in an industrial area. It produces lots of power. All the waste is controlled. What’s not to like about it? That’s what the new generation is saying and it’s reflected in public opinion.”

In May, Mr. Trump announced plans for a “nuclear renaissance” that called for quadrupling the nation’s power’s output by 2050, including 300 GW of net new capacity. One GW of power can provide electricity to approximately 750,000 homes.

The additional output is also intended to fuel expanded power demand due to the growth in data centers and Artificial Intelligence.

Mr. Sell said if the goal is achieved, nuclear’s share of powering the U.S. electrical grid will rise to as much as 30%.

“It’s not achievable if we build nuclear plants the way we did in the past,” Mr. Sell said. “It absolutely is achievable if we embrace the innovation in the new approaches and the new technologies that the industry is bringing.”

Mr. Trump began his quest to expand and advance nuclear power during his first term, signing into law a bipartisan bill to streamline the development of a new generation of nuclear reactors.

As part of that push, the Energy Department in 2020 awarded X-Energy $80 million to speed the development of an advanced reactor. The money helped the company develop its Xe-100 high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, now poised for construction in Seadrift, Texas.

The Texas reactor will be built as a joint project with Dow Chemical, which will use the reactor to generate steam to power its chemical plant.

About one-third of the power produced by the plant will be available for residential electricity.

The company last year announced a major deal with Amazon and Energy Northwest, a consortium of public utilities, to build another plant in Washington State. It’s set to begin construction as early as 2028.

Amazon invested $500 million in the reactors, which will power its data centers, web services and electric vehicle fleet. The first four advanced small modular reactors, known as SMRs, are expected to generate up to 320 MW of power, enough to provide electricity to 240,000 homes.

The smaller reactors use new technology that cuts waste, ensures greater safety, lowers costs and speeds construction compared to nuclear power plants of the past, which took many years to build and in some cases cost far more than initially planned.

The construction of two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle in Georgia took nearly 15 years to build and cost $20 billion more than initially planned.

“I first have to acknowledge that the criticism of what had happened in the past is fair. And the first thing our industry needs to do is acknowledge that,” Mr. Sell said. “Our approach from the beginning at X-Energy was, how can we combine technology, simplicity of design, a new and different delivery model, with a set of new and different customers, to significantly mitigate the construction execution risk? Because that is the thing that has held back our industry.”

Mr. Sell said X-Energy’s simplified design plans and off-site, modularized factory production of components, among other advances, will dramatically reduce the risk of delays and cost-overruns.

“But there are a lot of people in the country that aren’t going to believe it until they see it,” he said.

X-Energy is among several nuclear power companies gearing up to build new, small modular reactors.

Google recently announced a deal with Kairos Energy to develop an advanced SMR to power its data centers and has entered a “strategic agreement” with Elementl Power to accelerate the development of three nuclear reactor projects.

Like Amazon, Google’s attraction to nuclear is based in part on a company goal of reducing carbon emissions. Nuclear power emits no carbon dioxide or any other greenhouse gases.

While public perception of nuclear power has improved, not everyone believes the U.S. should be building more nuclear power plants.

Environmental groups, among them Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, remain staunchly opposed to nuclear power and claim it remains unsafe, expensive and difficult to build compared to solar, wind and other renewables.

Greenpeace labels nuclear power “an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity,” and calls for halting expansion and shutting down existing plants.

The Sierra Club cites the nuclear power plant meltdowns at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011 as evidence that “none of the fundamental problems with nuclear power have ever been addressed.”

The organization said storage of nuclear waste remains another problem. It can remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years.

Mr. Sell said nuclear power is the safest form of energy generation that’s ever been deployed at scale.

There have been no deaths in the U.S. caused by nuclear power plant accidents. There were no deaths or measurable harm caused to people as a result of the Three Mile Island accident, nor did anyone die as a result of the Fukushima nuclear accident, which was triggered by an earthquake and massive tsunami.

The Fukushima cleanup is ongoing and the site remains radioactive, but the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation reported that no adverse health effects directly linked to radiation from the accident were documented among the general public.

The U.S. is still grappling with how and where to store nuclear waste. A plan to bury spent nuclear material at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain has been all but scrapped following years of opposition from political leaders and other opponents in the state.

For now, nuclear power plants store waste on site. New technologies will reduce nuclear waste and some reactors will use waste to generate more power.

Mr. Sell said he’s certain the U.S. will build a repository for nuclear waste in the coming years. Such a project will employ thousands of people and next-generation technology will ensure it poses no health risks, he said.

Finland, Sweden, France, Switzerland, Canada and China are all in or nearing the process of building underground nuclear waste storage facilities, while Germany is beginning a site selection process for a repository.

“I do think that communities will say yes to that when you present it in the right way,” Mr. Sell said. “Because there is a massive economic bonanza associated with wherever the ultimate geologic repository goes.”