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X-energy, a company building next-generation nuclear reactors, announced Wednesday that it has an agreement with Energy Northwest to build up to 12 of the modular devices in Central Washington.

The news is something of a surprise after Maryland-based X-energy in March scuttled its plans to construct its first four demonstration reactors in the state, opting for a deal with chemical giant Dow to build in a Gulf state.


The new joint development agreement outlines the construction of the nuclear company’s Xe-100 advanced small modular reactors at a site in Richland, Wash., that is controlled by Energy Northwest and adjacent to Columbia Generating Station — the state’s only commercial nuclear power plant.

If all 12 reactors were built, they could generate up to a total of 960 megawatts of power, with the first reactor planned to come online by 2030.

The announcement did not disclose what the project is expected to cost or how it will be financed.

As the world strives to cut its use of carbon-emitting fossil fuels and slow global warming, there is renewed interest in nuclear power. Companies are developing smaller, less expensive reactors than were built in past decades. Energy generated from nuclear fission, or the splitting of atoms, doesn’t create carbon pollution, but does produce radioactive waste.

While wind and solar power installations have been rapidly expanding, power grids need some of their energy from sources that operate 24/7, which could include nuclear, hydroelectric dams, batteries and other alternatives.


“Energy Northwest’s mission is to provide the region with clean, reliable and affordable electricity, and X-energy’s innovative advanced reactor technology will be a valuable addition to our existing portfolio of carbon-free electric generating resources,” said Bob Schuetz, CEO of Energy Northwest, in a statement.

X-energy is proceeding with its arrangement with Dow in which it will deploy its first Xe-100 reactors at an existing Dow industrial site in Texas. That project is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP). DOE awarded X-energy $1.2 billion to help fund the demonstration plant.

X-energy plans to begin building its four reactors in Texas in 2026, with construction completed by 2030.

Following the announcement of the Texas project, “Energy Northwest reinforced its plans to work with X-energy to bring our technology to Central Washington,” said Robert McEntyre, an X-energy spokesman, by email. “We’ve been working with their team since that time to determine the best path forward, and today’s announcement reflects that progress and their desire to be a fast-follower of ARDP.”

Washington state’s TerraPower, a next-gen nuclear power company backed by Bill Gates, is slated to build its first demonstration plant in Kemmerer, Wyo., on the site of one of the state’s retiring coal plants. That project is a $4 billion public-private venture with about $2 billion in support from the same DOE program that’s backing X-energy.

TerraPower announced last October that it was conducting a feasibility study to explore additional locations for up to five of its reactors. Those locations have not been publicized.

While both X-energy and TerraPower have been moving ahead with their plans, both face the challenge of securing reactor fuel. Russia is currently the world’s only commercial producer of HALEU (high-assay, low-enriched uranium fuel and pronounced hay-lou). That source was scrapped after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and ongoing war.

On Monday, TerraPower and Centrus Energy announced a memorandum of understanding to “significantly expand their collaboration” in an effort to establish commercial-scale, domestic production capabilities of HALEU. The fuel would be produced at a Centrus facility in Ohio.

TerraPower’s CEO last year warned that operation of its demonstration plant was going to slip at least two years to 2030 because of the lack of HALEU. The MOU should help TerraPower meet that new deadline, according to the companies.

X-energy previously announced plans to create a fuel production facility in Tennessee to supply its reactors.

cross the United States, coal-fired power plants are shutting down for good. In the last twenty years, over 600 have been retired. But just because these plants aren’t burning coal doesn’t mean they aren’t still being used. A trend is now emerging in a number of states to repurpose the plants to create new jobs and supply clean, renewable energy.

So, why would a solar farm, for example, want to be placed at the site of a non-operational coal plant?

It turns out that because these plants are already wired to the power grid — meaning that they’re already connected to the network of substations, transformers, wires, sensors, and poles that carry electricity from power plants to be distributed to our homes — installing new power plants at the site of old ones saves energy companies a lot of money and time.

Additionally, many oppose installing new power lines because they can spoil a nice backyard view, or even reduce your property’s value.


All these factors make existing coal plants ideal sites for new clean energy projects to set up shop. In the race to ramp up clean energy production across the United States, this is an important part of what the future looks like.

The idea to transition these sites has taken hold in a number of states, with Illinois leading the pack. In the Prairie State alone, there are currently nine plants that will become solar farms or battery storage facilities, the New York Times reports.

And more coastal states like New Jersey and Massachusetts are opting to repurpose their coal plants for new wind farms.

These switches make sense, as clean energy is quickly becoming the least expensive energy source available in many states. So the next time you hear about a coal plant shutting down, ask if it’ll still be working to supply your community with clean and cheap electricity.

xxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) is planning to build one of the world's largest lithium processing facilities in Arkansas, with a capacity to produce 75K-100K metric tons/year of lithium, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

At that scale, the plant's production would equate to ~15% of all finished lithium produced globally last year.

The giant project could be built in stages, with modular trains constructed together or in separate locations near its future lithium production sites in south Arkansas, according to the report.

Other companies including Standard Lithium (SLI) and Tetra Technologies (TTI) are planning to build capacity in the area.

The Smackover formation, a geologic trend that runs from Texas to Florida and is rich with saltwater brine which contains small amounts of lithium, and the companies are increasingly optimistic they can scale up technologies to extract it.

a year long blackout, maybe

similar to COVID lockdowns

if we could somehow encourage 90% of the people on the planet to "help", a trifling amount

that might be something

Replying to CD's post from the rankings thread because it's more appropriate here...

That is what I think "we" learned when we did our own computer poll back when.  If it generated something odd, we "fixed" it, to the point it basically aligned with the human polls, more or less. 

This is a problem with climate modeling as well, they all have to align with past records (hoping they are accurate).  If they don't, they get adjusted.

This involves two interesting things...

• In general, this is or should be improving. Because we've been doing climate modeling long enough that we should be getting a track record of looking at the predictions of past models, and seeing whether they accurately predicted the current climate or not. So while the models had to be fitted to past records, the fact that models that might be built in say 2000 can be compared against results from 2000->2023 help to improve the models.
• It also means that the models are unlikely to predict "black swan" type events. Such as a rapid collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, or the idea that Greenland was actually green 400,000 years ago (which we didn't know about until recently, per your post from a few days ago). So when we're complacent based on "well the models don't predict X bad effect by 2100", that we need to recognize that might actually be a blindness in the model because we don't have many past records to compare to to test the model for those type of events. 

Which is an interesting conundrum. 

For a cleaner energy future, we must embrace small nuclear reactors | The Hill

The problem is one of timing and focus.