X-energy and its helium-cooled nuclear reactors

X-energy is developing small modular reactors to satisfy some of the planet’s most power-hungry users: industrial manufacturers that need high temperatures to produce billions of tons of concrete, plastics, fibers, and chemicals. Solar panels and wind turbines are great at producing electricity but what heavy industry also needs is raw heat—and lots of it. The manufacture of concrete, glass, and steel, as well as the production of many chemicals, plastics, and fertilizers, are still highly reliant on fossil fuels to produce that heat.

Traditional nuclear reactors simply don’t get hot enough. The cooling systems they use require liquid water to work, and even applying pressure to raise the water’s boiling point leaves their maximum operating temperatures hundreds of degrees cooler than needed. X-energy’s proposed Xe-100 reactor will use helium gas as a coolant instead, allowing it to operate at much lower pressures and higher temperatures.

The helium will heat water and create super-heated steam, which industry can use either directly or to generate 80 megawatts (MW) of electricity via a turbine, or a combination of the two. That’s about one-tenth of the capacity of most reactors operating today. In common with other small modular reactors (SMRs), the Xe-100 will use a modern uranium-based fuel called TRISO (short for tristructural-isotropic) that is extremely resistant to corrosion and melting.

Compact TRISO “pebbles” will be added continuously to the top of the reactor, then flow slowly to the bottom, where they will either be recycled or removed as waste. The company says the reactor will be intrinsically safe in the event of a loss of power—if temperatures inside rise, the nuclear reaction naturally slows and stops. Industrial heating currently accounts for 18 percent of annual global greenhouse-gas emissions, with about half of that coming from high-temperature processes that are difficult to electrify.

Co-locating small nuclear reactors at large manufacturing facilities could shrink some of the biggest carbon footprints in the world. The Xe-100 reactor could also be used by the fossil fuel industry, which today uses vast quantities of natural gas to generate the heat needed to recover oil from tar sands, and during oil refining. The flexibility of the Xe-100 means that it can be used for traditional electricity generation.

By scaling down in size and power from today’s gigawatt-scale fission plants, small reactors like the Xe-100 can serve more markets—even down to individual data centers. AI and data centers now represent the single largest component of new demand for electricity in the US, and their consumption is expected to double again by 2030. X-energy says that up to 12 of its reactors could be clustered together to provide 24/7 power on site, at a lower cost than a traditional nuclear power station and without the hassle of adding transmission infrastructure.