X-Energy has awarded Clark Construction Group a $48.2-million contract for the building phase of its advanced nuclear fuel fabrication facility, TX-1, in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
The contract award, encompassing Phase 2A of the facility construction, will include the completion of the core shell of the 214,812 square foot facility, according to X-Energy’s Tuesday press release. No nuclear equipment will be installed during this phase, an X-Energy spokesperson added.
Phase 2A is expected to begin in September, following the completion of the site development work, which is managed by Geiger Brothers.
Clark is one of the larger construction and infrastructure companies in the United States. Geiger Brothers, with offices in Ohio and Knoxville, has done projects in the nuclear and electric power markets and other industries.
The X-Energy facilities in Oak Ridge will make tristructural-isotropic or TRISO fuel for an advanced reactor project planned for the Texas Gulf Coast.
The fuel fabrication facility TX-1 is the first of two planned facilities at X-Energy’s site at Oak Ridge that will manufacture its TRISO fuel for its first commercial deployment of Xe-100, in partnership with Dow Chemical, in Seadrift, Texas and future deployments X-Energy said.
X-Energy’s project is a part of the Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. The company will also receive approval from the DOE to use an additional $30 million to pre-purchase important equipment and materials.
The additional money was approved to aid in successful construction phases and keep the program on schedule, according to the press release.
X-Energy said the construction contract milestone is significant as TX-1 will be the first Category 2 Fuel Fabrication Facility licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The company anticipates regulatory approval by May 2026 and to be in production by December 2027. A Category 2 fuel fabrication facility is a facility licensed to possess special nuclear material of moderate strategic significance, according to the NRC. These facilities include high-assay low-enriched fuel cycle plants.
TX-1 is expected to have an output of 5 metric tons of uranium or 700,000 TRISO pebbles per year, which would be enough to fuel up to 11 Xe-100 reactors, X-Energy said.
In November 2024, X-Energy announced it is also working to deploy a nuclear plant in Washington state with Energy Northwest in collaboration with Amazon. The project is part of a larger strategy with Amazon to bring more than 5,000 megawatts or 5 gigawatts of new energy online by 2039, according to the press release.