X-energy has selected Fluor for engineering and design of the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility, the small modular reactor plant planned near Richland, Washington. The announcement was made on November 5, 2026. The contract value was not disclosed.
Fluor will handle engineering, project development, supply chain, cost estimating and project controls for the so-called nuclear island. This is the part of the plant that houses the Xe-100 reactors and their supporting systems. The scope covers defining and managing this area, not building the entire power plant.
It is the second commercial contract between the two companies for the nuclear island. Fluor is already working on X-energy’s first proposed Xe-100 project in Seadrift, Texas, under the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. The experience gained there carries over to the new project, including execution planning and the investment decisions that precede construction.
The Xe-100 is an 80 MWe high-temperature gas-cooled reactor fueled with TRISO-X fuel and built in standardized plants of four or twelve units. According to X-energy, the reactor’s inherent safety features reduce the number of safety-related systems, which are grouped within the nuclear island. This allows two partners to work in parallel on different areas of the plant.
Cascade is sponsored by Energy Northwest, which will develop it alongside the Columbia Generating Station, the region’s only commercial nuclear power plant. The initial phase calls for four reactors totaling about 320 MWe, with possible expansion to twelve units and 960 MWe. The agreement between Energy Northwest and X-energy dates to July 2023. Amazon joined the project in October 2024 and is funding development as part of an agreement aiming for 5 GW of new nuclear capacity by 2039. Cascade is the first project under that agreement.
X-energy now reports a commercial portfolio of 11.5 GW, equal to 144 Xe-100 reactors. Besides Amazon, it has projects under way with Dow and with Centrica in the United Kingdom. With the second contract, Fluor brings to Cascade a model already tested in Texas: if the replication works, subsequent projects start from an already consolidated design baseline. For Cascade, the project sponsors indicate construction by 2030.
