Tennessee plant to produce fuel for Xe-100 reactors
Triso-X, a US manufacturer of advanced nuclear fuels, announced the completion of vertical construction at TX-1, an advanced nuclear fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
The company, a wholly-owned subsidiary nuclear reactor and fuel technology company X-energy, said the milestone completes the primary building structure of the 214,000-sq-ft (19,800 sq m) facility and enables the project to advance fully into its next phase of construction, including interior buildout, installation of fuel fabrication equipment and continued construction of supporting facilities.
Once operational, TX-1 is expected to produce approximately 700,000 Triso-X advanced nuclear fuel pebbles annually, equivalent to five tonnes of uranium, with capacity to provide fuel for up to 11 of X-energy’s Xe-100 reactors.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted Triso-X a 40-year special nuclear material licence for the facility earlier this year, the first NRC Category 2 fuel fabrication licence issued for the processing of high-assay low-enriched uranium (Haleu), which is used to produce Triso-X fuel.
TX-1 is expected to be the first new commercial-scale advanced US nuclear fuel fabrication facility built in more than 50 years.
Triso-X nuclear fuel is a highly robust, advanced fuel form for high-temperature gas-cooled reactors. It consists of a uranium-based fuel kernel surrounded by three distinct layers of ceramic and carbon materials, which form an individual containment system for each particle.
This tri-structural design is said to provide exceptional resistance to corrosion, high temperatures, and irradiation, making it impossible to melt under extreme conditions and containing radioactive fission products effectively.
In May the NRC approved the key environmental review for X-energy’s first project, which according to the construction permit application would see it build four of its 80-MW Xe-100 reactors at chemical giant Dow’s UCC Seadrift Operations, on Texas’ Gulf Coast.
X-energy is also advancing Xe-100 deployment with Energy Northwest in Washington state in collaboration with Amazon.
The project, known as the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility, is for 12 reactors producing a maximum of 960 MW of electricity.
