Dow wins approval for four advanced nuclear reactors in Texas

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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week issued a permit for the construction of four next-generation nuclear reactors at a petrochemical complex on the rural Gulf Coast of Texas.

The Long Mott Nuclear Power Plant, developed by chemical giant Dow and nuclear startup X-energy, is one of two flagship projects selected by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2020 for its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, intended to launch a new era of growth for the nation’s nascent nuclear sector.

“This milestone marks a significant step forward,” Mike Goff, deputy assistant secretary for nuclear energy, said in a press release Monday. “The NRC’s approval demonstrates significant progress toward the deployment of advanced reactors. »

The Texas project is at the forefront of a new generation of reactor designs that could revolutionize the atomic energy business model. They replace the gargantuan construction projects currently required for nuclear power plants with small, modular units that can be produced in factories and then shipped and assembled on-site at industrial facilities, from data centers to petrochemical plants.

“We understand that owning a nuclear facility is a different kind of responsibility,” Kreshka Young, North American business manager for energy and climate at Dow, said at a public meeting on construction permits for the project in the town of Port Lavaca in September. “We don’t take this lightly.”

Dow plans to install four 80-megawatt reactors by X-energy at its Seadrift Operations complex on the Gulf Coast between Houston and Corpus Christi. The units will not require the imposing concrete containment structures characteristic of existing nuclear reactors, nor the 16-mile emergency planning zone, thanks to what scientists describe as revolutionary safety features inherent in new reactor designs.

X-energy CEO J. Clay Sell, a former assistant secretary of energy, described the company’s Xe-100 unit as “physically impossible to melt.”

Diane Wilson, a fourth-generation retired shrimper from the small neighboring town of Seadrift and director of San Antonio Bay Waterkeeper, a local environmental organization, remains deeply skeptical. “Frankly, it’s outrageous,” she said. “It’s outrageous.”

Spent reactor fuel will be stored on-site as nuclear waste indefinitely, she noted, because the United States still does not have a permanent national storage site.

In 2025, Wilson’s organization filed legal challenges to the project’s permit application on safety grounds, which were ultimately rejected by the NRC. The agency approved Dow’s reactor construction permit after an expedited review under President Donald Trump’s executive orders aimed at speeding up the nation’s energy sector.

Diane Wilson makes comments from the podium during a Sept. 22 public meeting hosted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Port Lavaca. Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate News

“We met the 18-month timeline, proving that we can conduct rigorous safety reviews in a predictable time frame that move advanced nuclear technology from design to construction,” NRC President Ho K. Nieh said in a press release.

Dow has yet to make a final decision to pursue the project, the company said in a statement. If so, construction could begin before 2030.

If the project proves successful, it would “provide a path that other industries could emulate” to install dedicated on-site power generation, Martin O’Neal, general counsel for the Nuclear Energy Institute, said at the September meeting in Port Lavaca.

NRC held the meeting to respond to questions and comments from the public about the Long Mott Power Plant.

“The nuclear industry is watching this project very closely,” O’Neal said.

Over the past three decades, the United States has built just one new nuclear power plant, but federal officials in recent years have pushed a revival of the industry based on new reactor designs. The NRC issued its first permit for the construction of an advanced test reactor in 2023 and its first permit for an advanced commercial reactor in March 2026.

While conventional nuclear reactors use water for cooling, advanced designs use alternatives, from molten salt to gas. The Xe-100 uses helium. Rather than traditional fuel rods, the Xe-100 uses pellet fuel in a moving pebble bed.

“These are new technologies,” Mehdi Reisi Fard, deputy director of advanced reactors at the NRC, said at the public meeting in Port Lavaca in September.

A digital rendering of the Dow Xe-100 plant in Seadrift. Courtesy of X-energy

These innovations add to a feature known as “functional containment,” where the natural resilience and circulation of fuel beads prevents the type of uncontrolled heating that could lead to a reactor meltdown.

Compared to current control systems, functional containment “is less reliant on pumps or human intervention to mitigate anomalies,” Fard explained.

It runs on a new type of pelletized nuclear fuel, called TRISO fuel, developed over decades in Department of Energy laboratories.

“Simply put, TRISO particles cannot melt in a commercial reactor at high temperatures,” a DOE webpage states.

The new technology allows developers to avoid large and expensive safety features, such as massive concrete casings, required for traditional water-cooled reactors.

“The argument these developers use is that they don’t need physical containment because the reactor is very safe,” Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an interview earlier this year. “Nuclear designers have tried to reduce the costs of containment, and one way to do that would be to eliminate it altogether. »

But Lyman doesn’t consider the fuel to be as safe as authorities claim.

“It’s just a myth that this fuel is indestructible or resistant to fusion,” he said. “This fuel has vulnerabilities.”

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