When Dow decommissions the natural gas turbines at its Seadrift, Texas, plastics manufacturing site later this decade, it plans to switch on a first-of-its-kind small nuclear plant instead.
The project, awaiting a construction permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that was requested in March, is backed by up to $1.2 billion from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. Advanced gas-cooled nuclear technology from X-energy that operates at higher temperatures than legacy equipment will provide the industrial steam Dow needs for plastic pellet production.
Dow owns or contracts services from dozens of gas turbines and other combined heat and power systems across its petrochemical manufacturing footprint. Several years ago, it began evaluating the potential of small modular reactors to help reach its goal of reducing emissions by 5 million metric tons annually by 2030, according to an executive who anaylzes Dow’s capital investments in energy systems.
“Don’t discount the possibility of nuclear,” said Kreshka Young, North America business director for energy and climate at Dow. “There are a huge amount of benefits. It provides clean, firm power, and the cost can be very competitive. I would recommend that people not be afraid to look at it.”
High hopes for small nuclear
X-energy’s technology classifies as a small modular reactor — that is, one with a capacity of less than 300 megawatts. The current pipeline of such reactors is more than 47 gigawatts, which will require an investment of at least $360 billion, according to research firm Wood Mackenzie.
Dow’s installation will initially include four X-energy base modules, which have a capacity of about 80 megawatts. The ability to stack the units was important for reliability, Young said. Dow also found the compact size of X-energy’s system — about the dimensions of a gas turbine — appealing. The project is subject to ongoing review and ongoing government funding. “We take a very measured approach to this,” Young said, referring to Dow’s energy investments. “We are not in a situation to write blank checks.”
Small modular reactors are attractive because the timeline for building them is more predictable and cost-effective than legacy nuclear project development, said Alison Hahn, technical adviser for new nuclear technologies at the Nuclear Energy Institute. That’s because components can be constructed on an assembly line, enabling developers to standardize design and manage several processes in parallel, Hahn said.
The three largest artificial intelligence and cloud computing companies — Amazon, Google and Microsoft — are all considering advanced nuclear to power their data centers. Amazon was part of a $500 million funding round for X-energy in October 2024, which was increased to $700 million in February.
“X-energy provides an impactful solution to a critical challenge — and the support Amazon, Dow and other major corporations have provided underscores its potential and merit,” said Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of lead investor Citadel, when the initial funding was announced.
Amazon is looking to deploy up to 5 gigawatts of X-energy’s technology by 2039, starting with a four-unit, 320-megawatt project in central Washington that is being developed by Energy Northwest. The plan calls for the installation to be tripled over time.
The Dow project, however, is likely to be online first — as early as 2028, if project timelines stay on schedule. Its construction permit could be approved within 18 months, thanks to a new executive order by the Trump administration. After construction is complete, Dow and X-energy will need to apply for an operating license.
The Amazon and Dow commitments atop X-energy’s DOE funding will give backers the confidence to finance X-energy’s manufacturing and supply chain ramp-up as well as the workforce training that will be needed to support operations, said Hahn.
“Building out that order book allows you to confidently invest,” she said.
X-energy’s innovation: the ‘pebble bed’
What makes X-energy’s offering unique is the tristructural-isotropic (a.k.a TRISO) fuel used by its reactors — poppy seed-size particles of uranium clumped into billiard-size balls and spread out in a pebble bed. Helium is pumped through the pebbles, and heat is extracted for steam generation. TerraPower, which raised $650 million in June from investors including Bill Gates and NVDIA’s venture arm, uses a similar design.
X-energy’s reactors operate at temperatures higher than lava’s, making them appropriate for energy-intensive processes such as hydrogen production or petroleum refining. The design is explicitly meant to prevent meltdowns.
X-energy will manufacture its TRISO fuel at a facility it’s building in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The company, which employs about 600 people, is based in Rockville, Maryland.
The spent pebbles in X-energy’s reactors can be replaced by new ones on a daily basis, so shut down is not necessary, said Harlan Bowers, senior vice president and director for the Dow project.
“We see that as an advantage,” Bowers said, “but it does pose some additional challenges for the regulator, because most fuels are not moving, so there are some statistical aspects to calculating reactivity within that core. That means there are new techniques that the NRC will have to use to evaluate our safety case and ultimately approve our design.”