J Clay Sell, Executive Officer of X-Energy, speaks during the Ceraweek Energy Conference in Houston on March 9, 2023.
Bloomberg
For a start trying to commercialize new nuclear technology, getting Amazon’s support is a powerful thing. Following the announcement in October that the e-commerce giant was running a $ 500 million funding round for X-Energy, a developer of a small modular reactor, other investors bored to enter.
On Thursday, X-Energy said he had collected an additional $ 200 million from bold names, including the Enterprise Capital Fund focused on Boldface Laurene Powell Jobs.
Rockville, a Maryland-based company, controlled by space-centered billionaire I have GHAFFARIan, says its total C-C series of $ 700m gives enough money to get through the regulatory approval process for design his reactor and build the first, in AT, at a chemical factory Dow in Texas, as well as fill the first full -scale production line for its fuel cartridges.
Amazon also said this will help financing the development of a 320 megawatt with four X-Energy reactors with Washington State Utility Energy Northwest, to supply its hungry energy centers. This is a historical commitment to the new nuclear technology that spoke aloud to other investors, according to X-Energy J. Clay Sel. Just agreeing to buy energy is not enough to finally get a small trade nuclear reactor, he said. “What is enough is someone who will decide on the risk capital to actually see these projects built.”
X-Energy has now raised about $ 1.1 billion, making it better funded by 45 startups that develop small nuclear reactors, according to Pitchbook. However, Terrapower, with $ 1 billion, boasts the support of the world’s 16th richest person, Bill Gates.
X-Energy is trying to commercialize what is known as a pebble bed reactor, with uranium cartridges enclosed in pottery and graphite. If there is a failure in any part of the reactor systems, those intestines will not melt and the radiation will be contained, the company says. It is a high temperature design – it will produce a large amount of steam, as well as 80 megawatts of electricity, both Dow plans to use in its plant.
A cut shows the layers of the triso fuel pellets of the X-Energy. The company says it cannot melt, allowing the use of passive security systems and a smaller trace of the reactor.
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The reactor is small enough to fit into a trailer trailer. This will allow the X-energy to build them in a factory and deliver them to the already collected buyers, dramatically reducing the time for construction, which has been the most expensive element of creating a power plant nuclear.
The sale hopes to gain approval for the design by the nuclear regulatory commission in the next two and a half years, and get the reactor dow online in the early 2030s.
Of course, a constant in the nuclear industry has been that schedules and budgets were made to be absorbed. At the Vogtle Plant of George, the first new US reactor for decades was lit in 2023, seven years late and $ 17 billion on the budget.
Little modular reactors developers have promised that they will be safer as well as faster and cheaper to build. So far those promises have not been realized. In 2023 Utah Utah services withdrew the outlet in what was expected to be the first commercial SMR built in the US – a collection of six publicly traded nuscale reactors. They were sprinkled by balloon construction costs, which had increased from about $ 5.3 billion to 2021 to $ 9.3 billion.
X-energy has also reached the cost increases. In a 2023 appearance at the Energy Department over a $ 80 million grant she received for the Energy Northwest project, the company doubled its cost estimates for its reactor in a $ 4.75 billion interval at $ 5.75 billion. He mentioned inflationary pressures, higher interest rates and supply chain restrictions. The sale refused to share current cost estimates, but he said the fact that Dow and Amazon have chosen X-Energy for the only current commercial SMR projects in the SH.BA speaks for itself.
“You can end up based on our customer success that we are competitive to other market options,” he said.
Like all Ghaffarian companies, X-Energy is also focused on enabling humanity to expand to the stars. X-Energy has earned $ 5 million in federal funds with another Ghaffarian-controlled company, Lander lunar manufacturer’s intuitive machinery, to develop a mobile reactor to use on the moon. It also aims to adapt its technology to push the ship.
The X-Energy design looks strong for Daniel Kammen, a nuclear physicist and director of the renewable and proper energy lab at the University of California, Berkeley.
“They have one of the best combinations of physics and engineering and now the money of almost anyone,” he said. But Kammen is skeptical that the construction of numerous SMRs will turn out to be cheaper than a larger conventional plant, and that they can compete with the decreasing price of renewable energy.
Given the interest of billionaires in SMR technology, he believes they will be built and “some companies will be enriched”. But “I remain very skeptical that simply building a smaller reactor will somehow solve all the problems of Nuclear,” he said.
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