The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued a construction permit for a project that could reshape how heavy industries source power — and accelerate the nuclear race that will fuel artificial intelligence for decades. The approval by X-energy and Dow for four small modular reactors (SMRs) in Texas marks the first case in American history of an advanced nuclear plant authorized to directly power an existing industrial chemical operation.
The project, named Long Mott Generating Station, will be installed at Dow's UCC Seadrift Operations facility, a chemical manufacturing complex on the Texas Gulf Coast. Each of the four Xe-100 reactors will produce 80 megawatts of electricity and 200 megawatts of thermal capacity, totaling 320 MW of electrical power. The facility is designed to replace existing power and steam generation infrastructure at the site, which is approaching end-of-life, and provide clean energy to the facility for 60 years.
The Xe-100's distinguishing feature lies in the engineering details that set it apart from any commercial reactor in the United States. It is a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, a pebble-bed design that uses TRISO-X fuel in spheres the size of billiard balls. Each of these spheres contains thousands of uranium particles coated with multiple ceramic and metal layers — a safety architecture that the Department of Energy itself describes as "the most robust nuclear fuel on Earth." Unlike conventional light-water reactors, which require active emergency cooling systems to prevent core meltdown, the Xe-100 relies on passive physics: if the system is shut down, the reactor simply cools naturally, without any human action or external power.
This inherent safety feature is what enables the so-called "400-meter emergency planning zone" compared to the 16 kilometers (10 miles) required around conventional plants. In other words, the Xe-100 can be installed inside an existing industrial perimeter without the safety buffer that typically separates a nuclear plant from its neighbors. The NRC confirmed that the Xe-100 design can be safely sited and constructed within an operating industrial site — something that has never been done in the United States for a reactor of this type.
The approval is particularly significant because it marks the first time in nearly 60 years that the NRC has authorized a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor in the country, and the first for a pebble-bed HTGR design. The licensing process followed the NRC's 18-month schedule and used the "risk-informed, performance-based licensing framework" — a modern approach that replaces generic checklists with specific technical criteria for each design. The review drew on decades of Department of Energy research on HTGR reactors and TRISO fuel, as well as the DOE's Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP), which selected X-energy as one of its two primary awardees and aims to increase funding to $2.15 billion.
But here is the detail that separates a license from a construction site: the NRC approval does not mean construction will begin. Dow still needs to make a preliminary investment decision in 2027 and, subsequently, a final investment decision. Until then, the project remains in the phase of maturing the supply chain for long-lead components and developing the operating license application. If all goes as planned, large-scale construction could begin by the end of this decade, with first energy delivery targeted for the early 2030s.
That timing matters because it places the project at the intersection of current AI data center expansion and the availability of nuclear energy at industrial scale. X-energy has already partnered with Amazon to develop up to 5 GW of nuclear capacity by 2039 — the equivalent of six or seven Xe-100 plants like Seadrift — including projects with Energy Northwest in Washington and American Electric Power in Indiana. The company also signed an agreement with Centrica to expand SMRs in the United Kingdom. In August 2025, X-energy, Amazon, and South Korean consortia (KHNP and Doosan Enerbility) announced a collaboration to mobilize up to $50 billion in public and private investments in Xe-100 reactors.
X-energy's business model fits into two structural trends in global energy. First, the decarbonization of heavy industries — chemicals, cement, steel, refining — that cannot be electrified with solar or wind because they require high-temperature heat, not just electricity. The Xe-100 produces steam at over 700°C, hot enough for industrial processes that today rely on natural gas. Second, the exponential increase in electricity demand from AI data centers. Each large artificial intelligence model consumes gigawatt-hours of energy during training, and the data centers that host them are growing at a rate that already outpaces the expansion of conventional power grids in several U.S. regions.
The dominant narrative around energy and AI tends to revolve around solar panels, wind turbines, and lithium batteries — technologies that are already scalable but do not offer stable baseload generation. Nuclear energy, especially in SMR format, is an alternative that many analysts consider underappreciated by the market because it still lacks commercial-scale operational projects. The Seadrift project is precisely that test: it will be the first advanced SMR to power an industrial operation in the U.S., and the outcome will determine whether investors and regulators remain confident in the model or whether history repeats itself — as it has with so many other promising nuclear technologies that never left the licensing phase.
NRC Chairman Ho K. Nieh's response to the permit approval captures the sector's optimism: "We're proving we can do rigorous safety reviews on predictable timelines, moving advanced nuclear technology from design to construction." The question is whether this regulatory confidence will be enough to sustain billion-dollar investments during the five to eight years that separate a license from the first spark.
Sources: Power Engineering, OilPrice.com, X-energy, DataCenterDynamics
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