Startup expects to complete construction of its first fuel plant later this year

Amazon inched closer to its atomic datacenter dream on Friday after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensed its small modular reactor partner X-energy to make nuclear fuel for advanced reactors at a facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

The approval clears yet another hurdle to the commercial rollout of these miniaturized reactors by major bit barn operators. Amazon became one of the first to embrace the yet unproven tech in late 2024 when it made a $500 million bet on X-Energy's Xe-100 reactors to end its reliance on the power grid and fuel its datacenter growth.

X-Energy's license under 10 CFR part 70 enables its subsidiary TRISO-X to manufacture the high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel pellets that will eventually power that reactor.

The company boasts its TX-1 and TX-2 fuel plants are the first such facilities to receive approval in half a century, though we'll note they're ...