X-energy, the nuclear startup backed by Amazon, has begun construction on what federal officials describe as a first-of-its-kind fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The plant, known as TX-1, is designed to produce TRISO fuel for advanced small reactors, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued TRISO-X a Part 70 Special Nuclear Material License, an initial 40-year license, enabling commercial HALEU fuel manufacturing for TX-1 and TX-2. This convergence of construction activity and regulatory progress puts X-energy at the center of a broader U.S. push to build a domestic fuel supply chain for next-generation nuclear power, though real questions remain about whether the timeline and scale can match the ambition.
TX-1 Breaks Ground Under Federal Reactor Program
The TX-1 facility is not a speculative project on a whiteboard. The U.S. Department of Energy has confirmed that X-energy’s TRISO-X subsidiary has started building construction at its Oak Ridge site, describing TX-1 as a first-of-its-kind advanced nuclear fuel facility under the federal Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP). That designation underscores both the novelty of the TRISO fuel form and the lack of any comparable commercial-scale plant in the United States capable of fabricating this type of coated particle fuel for multiple advanced reactor designs.
The ARDP connection matters because it ties X-energy’s progress to a deliberate federal strategy rather than an isolated corporate bet. The program was set up to accelerate deployment of advanced reactors by backing not just the reactors themselves but also the enabling fuel cycle infrastructure. Without a reliable domestic source of TRISO fuel, small modular and high-temperature reactors would be forced to lean on foreign suppliers, a vulnerability that policymakers have become increasingly unwilling to tolerate. TX-1 is meant to close that gap by moving beyond pilot work into repeatable industrial production, but its ultimate impact will hinge on whether it can deliver fuel at the volumes, costs, and quality levels that utilities and industrial customers require.
NRC Advances 40-Year License for HALEU Production
While construction crews work on the ground in Oak Ridge, the regulatory process has moved beyond review and into authorization. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued TRISO-X a Part 70 Special Nuclear Material License, an initial 40-year license, enabling commercial HALEU fuel manufacturing for TX-1 and TX-2. The NRC had initiated its National Environmental Policy Act review for TRISO-X’s application, according to a formal notice in the Federal Register that outlined the scope of the proposed TX-1 operations. The application covers a 110-acre greenfield parcel at the Horizon Center industrial park and seeks a 40-year authorization to possess and use special nuclear material for the manufacture of HALEU-based TRISO fuel at commercial scale.
A license of that duration is significant because it signals an expectation of long-term, steady-state operations rather than a short-lived demonstration. The 40-year term gives X-energy and its customers a planning horizon more akin to that of conventional nuclear fuel contracts, helping advanced reactor developers make investment decisions with greater confidence about future supply. At the same time, the NEPA process, built around environmental impact statements, public comment periods, and potential hearings, can inject uncertainty into schedules for major projects. Other nuclear projects have seen multi-year delays tied to environmental and safety reviews, and TX-1 will have to navigate the same procedural gauntlet as it moves toward full-scale production.
Pilot Operations Since 2016 Provide a Foundation
X-energy’s fuel ambitions rest on nearly a decade of prior work in Oak Ridge. Pilot-scale production of TRISO particles has been underway since 2016, giving engineers and operators direct experience with the complex coating and quality control steps required to fabricate this fuel form. TRISO particles start as tiny uranium kernels that are successively encased in layers of carbon and ceramic materials, creating a miniature containment system around each grain of fuel that is designed to retain radioactive fission products even at very high temperatures.
This inherent containment is central to the safety case for many advanced reactor concepts, but translating a laboratory-scale process into an industrial one is a nontrivial leap. At commercial scale, TX-1 will need to produce and inspect billions of individual particles with extremely tight tolerances on layer thickness, defect rates, and impurity levels. The years of pilot work provide a technical foundation and help de-risk some of the manufacturing steps, yet they do not fully answer questions about throughput, cost per unit of energy, or long-term reliability of equipment when run around the clock. How smoothly X-energy can ramp from initial batches to steady, high-volume output will be one of the clearest indicators of whether advanced reactor deployment timelines are realistic.
HALEU Supply Remains a Strategic Bottleneck
Even if TX-1 performs flawlessly, the broader fuel cycle still faces a fundamental constraint: access to HALEU. TRISO fuel for many advanced reactors relies on uranium enriched above the 5% level typical of today’s large light-water reactors, and for years the only meaningful commercial source of such material has been Russia. Efforts to stand up domestic enrichment capacity, including new centrifuge cascades and federal procurement programs, are underway but remain modest relative to projected demand from multiple reactor vendors and potential industrial end users.
This upstream bottleneck creates a risk that the United States could build out fabrication capacity faster than it can secure the enriched feedstock to keep those plants fully utilized. In that scenario, TX-1 might operate below nameplate capacity for extended periods, limiting its ability to drive down unit costs and undermining some of the economic rationale for advanced reactors. Policymakers have floated ideas ranging from strategic HALEU reserves to expanded public-private partnerships on enrichment, but those initiatives are still in development. The success of X-energy’s fuel business will therefore depend not only on its own engineering execution but also on whether parallel investments in enrichment and uranium conversion materialize on a compatible schedule.
What Amazon’s Backing Means for Nuclear Fuel
Amazon’s backing of X-energy adds a distinctive commercial driver to what has historically been a government-dominated sector. Large technology companies are facing surging electricity needs from data centers and artificial intelligence workloads, and many have set aggressive climate targets that push them toward carbon-free baseload power. By investing in an advanced reactor developer that is vertically integrated into fuel fabrication, Amazon is effectively signaling that it wants more control over the long-term availability and characteristics of the power it will consume, rather than relying solely on traditional utility offerings.
That kind of demand pull could prove important for projects like TX-1, which require substantial upfront capital and have payback periods measured in decades. A deep-pocketed corporate partner with a clear need for reliable, low-carbon electricity can help underwrite the risk that fuel and reactor deployment timelines slip, providing financial resilience as regulatory and supply chain hurdles are worked through. At the same time, Amazon’s involvement does not eliminate core uncertainties around HALEU sourcing, licensing milestones, or public acceptance of new nuclear facilities. Instead, it layers a powerful commercial incentive on top of existing federal programs, potentially accelerating progress if the technical and regulatory pieces fall into place, but also raising the stakes if they do not.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
