TRISO-X announced this week it has begun construction of its first nuclear fuel fabrication facility, TX-1, at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee.
“As TX-1 takes shape, it will stand as a symbol of our team’s relentless dedication and determination to bring this transformative project forward in just a few years, not decades,” Joel Duling, president of TRISO-X, said in a Monday press release.
TRISO-X’s, X-Energy’s subsidiary, TX-1 facility is the first of two planned at X-Energy’s site at DOE’s Oak Ridge Site. The 110-acre site at the Horizon Center in Roane County, Tenn., next to the federal site will manufacture tri-structural-isotropic or TRISO fuel for the company’s first commercial Xe-100 reactor in Texas, as well as future reactors, X-Energy said.
In August, X-Energy awarded Clark Construction Group a $48.2 million contract for the building phase of the TX-1 facility. The project is moving from site development to full-scale facility construction, the company said.
The construction on this next phase is expected to be completed by mid-2026, the company said.
X-Energy expects to be the first Category II fuel fabrication facility licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). X-Energy said it anticipates regulatory approval by May 2026 and to start production by December 2027.
A Category II fuel fabrication facility is a facility licensed to possess special nuclear material of moderate strategic significance, according to NRC’s website. These facilities include high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel cycle plants.
NRC has recently extended the comment period on TRISO-X’s draft environmental review for its special nuclear material license application.
If licensed, TX-1 could have an output of five metric tons of uranium or 700,000 TRISO pebbles per year, X-Energy said. TX-1 will have the ability to fabricate enough fuel for up to 11 Xe-reactors, the company added.
X-Energy said it has been making efforts to qualify TRISO-X pebble fuel for commercial use in the Xe-100 reactor. According to the release, the company started confirmatory testing of its TRISO-X fuel at DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory’s Advanced Test Reactor, in conjunction with DOE and the National Reactor Innovation Center.