X-energy's Sam Levenback on high-temperature gas reactors, the Dow and Amazon partnerships, and rebuilding the US nuclear supply chain
Feb 20, 2026 with Sam Levenback
Key Points
- X-energy secured an NRC permit to operate its Triso fuel manufacturing facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, unblocking commercial supply chain buildout for high-temperature gas reactors.
- The company is advancing two reactor projects toward early 2030s operations: one with Dow Chemical in South Texas for industrial heat, another with Amazon in Washington State for data center power.
- X-energy's 900-plus headcount and framing of demand as insatiable signal the two announced projects are beachheads into a broader market rather than isolated deployments.
Summary
X-energy is building two high-temperature gas-cooled reactor projects aimed at commercial operation in the early 2030s. The first is in South Texas with Dow Chemical, which needs sustained high-temperature process heat for manufacturing. The second is in Washington State with Amazon, powering one of the cloud giant's largest Pacific Northwest data center clusters. Both projects signal a shift in the nuclear supply chain toward industrial and computing loads that traditional utilities have not served well.
The company secured an NRC permit last week to operate its Triso fuel manufacturing facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, removing a critical regulatory barrier for supply chain buildout. X-energy now employs over 900 people and frames demand as insatiable, suggesting the two announced projects are entry points into a broader market rather than standalone deals. The early 2030s timeline reveals the lag between funding and deployment in advanced nuclear, roughly six to eight years from today.