Rockville, Md.-based small modular reactor developer X-energy has contracted Fluor to provide design and engineering services for its proposed SMR project in Richland, Wash. at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site.
Under the agreement, Fluor will work closely with X-energy to provide design development, supply chain and other project related services for the SMR project, Cascade Advanced Energy Facility, according to Fluor’s Thursday press release. No contract value was provided in the release.
With the two companies already working together on X-energy’s Texas SMR project, they leverage those experiences to apply them at the Washington facility. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently completed the environmental review of X-energy’s Xe-100 proposed reactor in Seadrift, Texas.
Fluor and X-energy initially partnered up in April, and now this new contract reinforces its partnership, Fluor said.
“Advanced nuclear technologies are poised to play a critical role in meeting growing energy demand while supporting decarbonization goals,” Pierre Bechelany, Fluor’s business group president of energy solutions, said in the release. “The Cascade Advanced Energy Facility represents an important step forward in the deployment of next-generation nuclear energy.”
The Cascade Advanced Energy Facility is proposed to deploy four Xe-100 reactors, with the potential building up to 12 units at the site. The Xe-100 unit is a high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor technology designed to generate up to 80 megawatts of electricity. This Richland SMR project would generate up to 320 megawatts with the initial four units.
The Richland SMR project comes as a part of a 2024 deal between X-energy, Energy Northwest and Amazon to build several Xe-100 reactors in Washington state. This Washington SMR project is the first project X-energy and Amazon are working on under its agreement to build up to 5,000 megawatts of new nuclear energy, according to X-energy’s press release.
Last October, Energy Northwest contracted a team made up of Kiewit Nuclear Solutions, Black and Veatch and Aecon to plan and construct the four Xe-100 SMRs.
