Key facts
- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved X-energy's construction permit for four Xe-100 reactors at a Dow chemical plant in Texas.
- Each Xe-100 reactor is designed to generate 80 megawatts of electricity and 200 megawatts of heat, according to the report.
- X-energy says the approval is the first for an advanced nuclear reactor at a US industrial site.
- Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists said the NRC deferred critical safety questions rather than resolving them before construction.
- Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund led X-energy's $500 million Series C-1, and Amazon has committed to buy 5 gigawatts of capacity.
- X-energy's April IPO raised $1 billion; its shares are trading at less than half the offering price, according to the report.
X-energy announced on Monday, November 9, 2026, that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had approved its construction permit application for four Xe-100 reactors at a Dow chemical plant in Texas. Each reactor will be capable of generating 80 megawatts of electricity and 200 megawatts of heat, according to the report.
X-energy says the approval is the first for an advanced nuclear reactor at an industrial site in the United States. The company says its design, which flows helium gas over uranium-containing fuel pellets, is safer than many existing reactors.
The Union of Concerned Scientists questioned that claim and the speed of the permit. "The NRC only accomplished this feat by pushing consideration of critical safety questions to a later date—issues the NRC should've fully resolved before green lighting construction," Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety for the organization, said in a statement.
The U.S. nuclear industry has pinned its hopes on small modular reactors, or SMRs, which proponents say will be faster and cheaper to build, though the report says those advantages have yet to be proven. No SMR is currently in operation in the U.S., and X-energy says Dow's reactors will not be operational until the early 2030s.
X-energy has drawn interest from data center developers seeking electricity supply. Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund led X-energy's $500 million Series C-1, and Amazon has also committed to buying 5 gigawatts of capacity from the startup, according to the report.
X-energy's April initial public offering raised $1 billion, the report says. The company's shares are trading at less than half their initial offering price, and the permit approval was only enough to recover last week's losses, according to the report.