Triso-X targeting December 2027 for startup of Oak Ridge plant

SAVANNAH, GA. — Triso-X is targeting Dec. 6, 2027, for production of its first “pebble” of fabricated nuclear fuel at its facility located on land formerly owned by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, a company executive told a conference here Thursday.

The 215,000-square-foot uranium enrichment facility, called TX-1, will employ about 463 people, said Triso-X Vice President Gary Bell in a presentation to Exchange Monitor’s Radwaste Summit.

Triso’s Horizon Center Industrial Park is being developed on 110 acres of reclaimed land formerly held by DOE at the Oak Ridge Site, Bell said. Triso-X is part of X-energy, a small modular reactor company based in the Greater Washington, D.C. area. In December, X-energy picked Geiger Brothers to build the TX-1 plant that will make fuel for the early deployments of the Xe-100 High-Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor, according to a press release.

TX-1 is being developed in partnership with the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy under its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, Bell said. X-energy was also awarded an investment tax credit for the fuel fabrication plant.

The licensing process with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is well underway for the TX-1 plant, Bell said. He showed a slide indicating the company has already filed more than 1,600 pages and is working its way through requests for additional information.

The NRC has set up a webpage that makes it easy to monitor developments for the uranium enrichment plant, Bell said.