X-energy has selected Fluor Corporation for engineering and design of the nuclear island at the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility, the Xe-100 small modular reactor plant proposed by Energy Northwest near Richland, Washington. The announcement came on November 5 and lifted the company’s share price on Wall Street.
The contract covers engineering, project development, supply chain, cost estimating and project controls for the part of the plant that houses the reactors and their support systems. The value was not disclosed. Fluor said it will book the contract in the third quarter. The conventional portion of the plant remains with Cascade Nuclear Partners, a joint venture of Kiewit Nuclear Solutions, Black & Veatch and Aecon.
This is the second commercial agreement between X-energy and Fluor for the nuclear island. The first, signed in April, covers the project proposed at Seadrift, Texas, on Dow’s site, which is being developed under the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. X-energy aims to carry the experience gained in Texas over to Washington, cutting costs and schedules over time through standardization and repeatable execution.
The Cascade project is the first under the collaboration between X-energy and Amazon, which plans to deploy 5 GW of new nuclear capacity by 2039. The agreement between Energy Northwest and X-energy, signed in July 2023, provides for up to 12 Xe-100 modules. Each unit is an 80 MWe high-temperature gas-cooled reactor fueled with TRISO-X fuel and designed for standard four- or twelve-unit plants.
According to X-energy, the technology’s inherent safety features reduce the number of safety-related systems compared with light-water reactors. These systems are grouped within the nuclear island, which limits the portion of the plant subject to the most stringent quality requirements. The company reports a commercial pipeline of 11.5 GW, equal to 144 Xe-100 reactors.
One caveat remains on the path ahead. The customer has not yet made a final construction decision, and the contract covers the design phase. Still, repeating the same approach with Fluor at two different sites is a concrete first step toward a series of identical plants. If Texas and Washington move forward in parallel, later projects, including Centrica’s at Hartlepool in the United Kingdom, could start from an already proven template.
