Last week, TRISO-X announced tentative plans to create some 1,140 new jobs in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The company hopes to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in equipment to build a new fuel facility and R&D center at Horizon Center Industrial Park, according to the state's Department of Economic and Community Development .
TRISO-X is unique in that it is the first company to receive a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build and operate a commercial-scale facility for producing high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel in the U.S. The company’s parent, Maryland-based X-energy, is trying to make advanced small modular reactors, accelerate commercialization of advanced nuclear technologies and strengthen the U.S. supply chain for critical nuclear fuel.
Founded and based in Oak Ridge, TRISO-X broke ground in 2022 on what was, at the time, North America’s first commercial advanced nuclear fuel facility.
The company said it received an $11 million economic development grant from Tennessee. TRISO-X specified that the funding will support continued development of its current campus in Oak Ridge, as well as a potential second commercial fuel facility and a dedicated R&D center.
If everything goes according to plan, TRISO-X expects to have three facilities designed to establish domestic, commercial-scale manufacturing and research capabilities for the company's proprietary tri-structural isotropic (TRISO) fuel. TRISO particle fuel is considered the most robust nuclear fuel on the planet, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
The first facility, known as the TX-1, is anticipated to be the first purpose-built commercial TRISO fuel fabrication facility in the U.S. TX-1 is currently under construction.
TX-2 will be a second, larger fuel fabrication facility to significantly boost capacity, with enhanced automation and production efficiency based on TX-1 operational experience. This is where the more than 1,000 new jobs would come into play.
Finally, TX-L will be a dedicated fuel fabrication laboratory facility focused on fuel innovation, testing and continuous improvement of the manufacturing processes.
When completed, the campus is expected to establish one of the world’s largest commercial-scale nuclear fuel fabrication campuses, with the capacity to produce enough fuel to support 55 of X-energy’s Xe-100 advanced small modular reactors. That represents nearly 4.5 gigawatts of new advanced nuclear power capacity, or enough to power 3.3 million U.S. households.
