Month: March 2025

News provided by

The Dow Chemical Company 

Mar 31, 2025, 08:00 ET

• Project supported by U.S. DOE’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program
• Represents a key milestone toward bringing advanced nuclear energy to fruition in the U.S. 

MIDLAND, Mich. and ROCKVILLE, Md., March 31, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Dow (NYSE: DOW) and X-Energy Reactor Company, LLC (“X-energy”) announced the submission of a construction permit application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (“NRC”) for a proposed advanced nuclear project in Seadrift, Texas.

Dow’s proposed advanced small modular reactor (“SMR”) project is being developed by its wholly-owned subsidiary, Long Mott Energy LLC. The project is focused on providing Dow’s UCC¹ Seadrift Operations manufacturing site (“Seadrift” or the “site”) with safe, reliable, and clean power and industrial steam replacing existing energy and steam assets that are near end-of-life. The project is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (“ARDP”) which is designed to accelerate the deployment of advanced reactors through cost-shared partnerships with U.S. industry.

Since 2018, X-energy, and subsequently Dow, have worked with the NRC through extensive pre-application engagements to demonstrate the unparalleled safety profile of the Xe-100 advanced SMR through its advanced fuel design, passive safety features, and state-of-the-art analysis techniques. This has culminated in a comprehensive application submittal that exceeds NRC regulations for the protection of public health and safety, as well as the environment, with substantial safety features.

Approval of the construction permit is an important step forward that could take up to 30 months. Once the permit is received and upon Dow confirming the ability to deliver the project while achieving its financial return targets, construction could begin. Dow expects the cost of energy ‐ net of all subsidies ‐ to be competitive with other alternatives for firm, clean energy.

“This is an important next step in expanding access to safe, clean, reliable, cost-competitive nuclear energy in the U.S.,” said Edward Stones, business vice president, Energy & Climate, Dow. “We look forward to engaging with the NRC, DOE, our business partners and the community throughout the application process.”

“The construction permit application is a critical step to deliver on the vision of Congress and DOE to position the U.S. at the forefront of commercializing advanced reactor technology,” said J. Clay Sell, chief executive officer of X-energy. “Together with our world-class partner, Dow, we will demonstrate how the technology deployed at Seadrift, Texas, can be quickly and efficiently replicated to meet incredible power demand growth across America.”

The proposed project could begin construction later this decade and start up early next decade. The nuclear power and steam assets would eliminate most Scope 1 and 2 emissions at the site and ensure the site remains competitively advantaged for the life of the facility.

X-energy was selected by the DOE in 2020 to develop, license, and build an operational Xe-100 advanced SMR and TRISO-X fuel fabrication facility. Since that award, X-energy has completed the engineering and preliminary design of the nuclear reactor, has begun development and licensing of a fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and has secured approximately $1.1 billion in private capital to commercialize its technology. Once complete, Long Mott Generating Station is expected to be the first grid-scale advanced nuclear reactor deployed to serve an industrial site in North America.

Dow’s Seadrift site covers 4,700 acres and manufactures more than 4 billion pounds of materials per year used across a wide variety of applications including food packaging and preservation, footwear, wire and cable insulation, solar cell membranes, and packaging for medical and pharmaceutical products.

Available pictures for download:
XE-100 reactor
Plant rendering

Dow
Dow (NYSE: DOW) is one of the world’s leading materials science companies, serving customers in high-growth markets such as packaging, infrastructure, mobility and consumer applications. Our global breadth, asset integration and scale, focused innovation, leading business positions and commitment to sustainability enable us to achieve profitable growth and help deliver a sustainable future. We operate manufacturing sites in 30 countries and employ approximately 36,000 people. Dow delivered sales of approximately $43 billion in 2024. References to Dow or the Company mean Dow Inc. and its subsidiaries. Learn more about us and our ambition to be the most innovative, customer-centric, inclusive and sustainable materials science company in the world by visiting www.dow.com.

About X-Energy Reactor Company, LLC
X-Energy Reactor Company, LLC, is a leading developer of advanced small modular nuclear reactors and fuel technology for clean energy generation that is redefining the nuclear energy industry through its development of safer and more efficient advanced small modular nuclear reactors and proprietary fuel to deliver reliable, zero-carbon and affordable energy to people around the world. X-energy’s simplified, modular, and intrinsically safe SMR design expands applications and markets for deployment of nuclear technology and drives enhanced safety, lower cost and faster construction timelines when compared with other SMRs and conventional nuclear. For more information, visit X-energy.com or connect with us on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Dow
Investors:
Andrew Riker
ajriker@dow.com
+1 989-633-5564

Media:
Sarah Young
media@dow.com
+1-989.638.6871

X-energy
Media:
Robert McEntyre
240.673.6565
inquiries@x-energy.com

¹ Union Carbide Corporation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company

SOURCE The Dow Chemical Company

Jamie Smyth in New York
Published FEB 19 2025

Developers of small modular nuclear reactors have raised at least $1.5bn in funding over the past year, tapping into a surge of investor interest linked to power supply deals agreed with Big Tech.

They have also secured pledges of billions of dollars of support from governments, amid a global race to launch new technologies considered critical to powering the artificial intelligence revolution.

The largest fundraising of $700mn was closed this month by X-energy, a US developer that added Jane Street and other institutional investors to a register that included technology giant Amazon, Ken Griffin, founder and chief executive of Citadel and chemical company Dow.

Paris-based developer Newcleo raised $151mn in September and US-based developers Blue Energy and Last Energy raised $45mn and $40mn respectively last year. Nano Nuclear Energy, a developer of microreactors which listed in May, raised $134mn capital in 2024.

Three SMR developers listed in New York, Oklo, NuScale and Nano Nuclear, raised more than $700mn through share sales and other financing mechanisms over the past 12 months, according to a Financial Times analysis of public records and data from PitchBook and BloombergNEF.

Westinghouse, Rolls-Royce, Holtec International, GE Hitachi and Bill Gates’ TerraPower are also among a host of companies investing in about 60 SMR projects globally, according to World Nuclear Association data.

Amazon’s purchase of a stake in X-energy and Google’s power supply deal with SMR developer Kairos Power, which both occurred in October, have shaken up a funding market that soured
in 2023 because of high interest rates and inflation.

Improving investor sentiment has fueled a surge in the share prices of Oklo and NuScale, which boosted their combined market capitalisation jump by almost$8bn following the deals. It has encouraged some early-stage venture capital, providing more options for SMR developers.

Core Power, a UK-based company which designs reactors for the shipping industry, told the Financial Times it is close to finalizing a $500mn fundraising round from strategic investors. Holtec International, one of four shortlisted bidders in a UK government competition for SMR developers, said it is exploring funding options.

“There has been a dramatic change in the capital markets for companies like ours,” said Clay Sell, chief executive of X-energy, adding the recent deals demonstrated how the technology industry fully appreciates the role nuclear will play in providing reliable, clean power.

Surging power demand in the US caused, in part, by the rollout of AI data centres is causing the technology sector to underwrite part of the capital costs of deploying nuclear energy.

Last year Microsoft signed a 20-year power deal with Constellation Energy to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, citing its value as a source of emissions-free energy that would not dent climate targets.

But only a handful of nuclear plants can be restarted in the US and building standard-sized reactors is considered risky because of the recent history of lengthy delays and cost overruns.

Instead, the technology industry is focusing on SMRs, which are new types of advanced nuclear reactors that have a power capacity of 300MW of less, or about a third of the size of standard facilities.

Oklo, which is chaired by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, signed a non-binding agreement with Switch, a large privately held data centre operator, to build reactors with a total capacity of up to 12 gigawatts — enough in total to power all 7.6mnhouseholds in New York state.

Meta is evaluating proposals from SMR developers for a tender to supply up to4GW of capacity to support its data centre roll out in the early 2030s.

But analysts warn developers still face technical, regulatory and funding risks despite the improved sentiment.

NuScale is the only SMR developer with a design approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

TerraPower filed its construction permit application to the NRC last year and has begun preparatory construction work on a site in Wyoming but most companies have not started the process.

Developers want technology companies to finalize the dozens of non-binding memorandums of understanding they have signed to provide them with financial certainty.

“To see more SMR projects announced and move forward we need to see binding agreements, rather than MOUs,” said Marc Bianchi, analyst at TD Cowen, an investment bank.

Government funding is critically important for developers because of the risks associated with a first-of-a kind technology and a history of delays and budget overruns that have blighted nuclear projects, say investors.

“We have to have federal dollars. I just can’t underscore that enough,” Google’s head of energy market development, Caroline Golin, told a Nuclear Energy Institute conference in New York last week.

In the US, Joe Biden’s administration kick-started the industry by pledging billions of dollars in grants to X-energy, TerraPower and other developers. It also offered production tax credits of up to 50 per cent to support the deployment of SMRs in the Inflation Reduction Act.

President Donald Trump wants to repeal the IRA and has frozen billions of dollars of loans to the clean energy sector, prompting industry concerns over funding.

But the new US energy secretary, Chris Wright, who sat on the board of Oklo until his confirmation, and the Republican party are strong supporters of nuclear energy, providing executives with hope that Washington’s support remains firm.

“We remain confident,” said Sell from X-energy. “The president has talked extensively about the role nuclear should play in this energy dominance strategy, which we strongly support.”

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