Amazon-backed SMR maker raises $700M, sans working reactor
Months after Amazon joined a half-billion-dollar funding round for next-gen modular nuclear startup X-energy, the biz has announced a supplemental Series C-1 raise – despite its fission reactor design remaining unproven.
X-energy today secured $700 million from new backers to support its small modular reactor (SMR) development, which it aims to bring online “across the US” by 2039. Alongside previous funds from Amazon, fresh investors include Jane Street, Ares Management Funds, and the Emerson Collective, founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
“We look forward to continuing to advance and scale our technology and realize our vision of fulfilling the growing energy needs of future generations,” said X-energy founder and executive chairman Kam Ghaffarian.
Amazon’s investment in X-energy, made in October, included a pledge to support the development of four SMRs for Energy Northwest, a Washington state public power consortium. The project plans to deploy four of X-energy’s Xe-100 reactors, each designed to produce 80 MW of electrical output. If completed, the atomic reactors would collectively generate up to 320 MW of electricity, with operations expected to begin sometime in the next decade.
As with most SMR projects in the United States, X-energy’s design has yet to receive approval from America’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“Proceeds from the [Series C-1] fundraise will further the completion of X-energy’s reactor design and licensing,” the startup said. X-energy told us in an emailed statement it is preparing its initial construction permit application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and plans to submit it sometime in the first quarter of this year.
That said, X-energy didn’t answer questions about whether it has a working reactor yet. It has announced multiple partnerships and development plans, including a collaboration with Dow to build its first Xe-100 power plant at Dow’s Seadrift Operations facility in Texas. Dow said in 2023 that the project was expected to be completed by the end of the decade. Again, we need to see a working reactor from X-energy first.
X-energy is developing its own fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where it plans to produce tri-structural isotropic (TRISO) particle fuel for its reactors. The US Department of Energy describes TRISO fuel as “the most robust nuclear fuel on Earth” as it is designed to withstand extreme heat far beyond that of conventional nuclear fuels and is highly resistant to meltdown.
Each uranium oxycarbide TRISO fuel pellet is encased in a triple-layer carbon and ceramic shell, effectively acting as its own containment vessel to (ideally, cough) prevent the release of radioactive fission products. Other than X-energy, several companies in the US, including Kairos Power, BWX Technologies (BWXT), and Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC), are currently producing TRISO fuel pellets.
X-energy’s TRISO pellets produced so far have been made at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the outfit said funds raised in the Series C-1 round will be going toward the first phase of building its own fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge.
Once completed, X-energy’s Xe-100 reactors will use high-temperature, gas-cooled technology that, like other SMR designs, is built to avoid meltdowns and other problems associated with previous generations of nuclear fission power.
This funding round, the startup told us, “gives X-energy the necessary funding to complete the regulatory approval process for our reactor design, the development of our first project at a Dow chemical plant in Texas, and to fulfill the first full-scale manufacturing line for our fuel pellets.”
As of now, and as far as we’re aware, only one SMR design has received approval for construction in the US: NuScale’s design. No commercial SMRs are currently operational in the United States. Globally, there are three operational SMRs: One each in Russia and China, and a working test reactor in Japan, according to the Nuclear Energy Agency.
Nuclear fission power, whether from SMRs or recommissioned pressurized water reactors, has become a hot item for the tech world as it faces ballooning energy costs associated with hyperscale datacenters and power-hungry AI increasing emissions despite pledged cuts.
Along with betting on atom-splitting power, tech firms are also betting on fusion. Helion, a fusion startup chaired by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, recently raised $425 million, bringing its valuation to $5.4 billion. Despite this significant funding, the biz has yet to achieve net-positive energy reactions and has missed multiple self-imposed deadlines.
Say what you will about the feasibility or slow development of SMRs – at least nuclear fission power actually works. ®
