Dow's Seadrift chemical complex on the Texas Gulf Coast has moved a step closer to running on nuclear heat. Federal regulators have signed off on the plant's safety case, the second of two major reviews standing between the project and a construction permit.
The path to this point began with a chemical company rather than a utility. The reactor is a high-temperature gas-cooled design, a technology the Energy Department has studied for decades, fueled with graphite pebbles packed with coated uranium particles. Support comes from the Energy Department's Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, and the plant would serve to demonstrate X-energy's Xe-100 technology, the NRC's project page states.
The safety finding extends beyond one Texas site due to the reactor's proximity to people and factories. The design qualified for an emergency planning zone of 400 meters, against the 10 miles typical for conventional light-water plants, the release said. That shrinkage is what allows a reactor inside a chemical plant's fence line rather than on a remote riverbank, and it is the feature industrial and data-center customers have been watching most closely. Each future application will still face its own review, but the staff positions taken here become the reference point for the next one.
The permit decision itself is now the remaining regulatory step. Management told investors in August it expected the NRC's final review to finish late this year with the permit in hand by the first quarter of 2027, according to its earnings filings.