The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded an additional 1 billion dollars to X-energy, an advanced nuclear reactor startup backed by Amazon, bringing the federal government's total commitment to the company's Texas reactor project to roughly 2.1 billion dollars. The funding, delivered through the DOE's Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program under a fifty-fifty cost-sharing structure, will support construction of four 80-megawatt Xe-100 reactors at a Dow Chemical facility in Seadrift, Texas.
The new award nearly doubles the federal government's earlier 1.2 billion dollar investment in X-energy and puts the company's combined federal backing on par with other major advanced reactor demonstrations, including TerraPower's project in Wyoming. Dow expects the Seadrift reactors to reduce the facility's annual emissions by about 440,000 metric tons once operating, with commercial service targeted for the early 2030s.
The project received environmental clearance from federal regulators in May, and X-energy expects the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to issue construction authorization by early 2027. Only TerraPower and Kairos Power currently hold active NRC construction permits for advanced reactors, underscoring how early-stage the licensing pipeline remains even as federal dollars flow toward the sector.
X-energy's broader agreements with Dow, Amazon, and UK-based Centrica point toward construction of up to 144 Xe-100 reactors globally, and the company's fuel fabrication facility near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is scheduled to open in 2028. As of mid-2026, the Department of Energy had already reimbursed X-energy approximately 546 million dollars in project expenditures under the cost-sharing arrangement.
Source: Canary Media -- https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/nuclear/federal-funding-x-energy-small-nuclear-reactor