X-Energy SPAC and Other Funding

On December 6, 2022, X-energy has entered into a definitive business combination agreement with Ares Acquisition Corporation (NYSE: AAC), a publicly-traded special purpose acquisition company. The SPAC is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2023, the combined company will be named X-Energy, Inc. and its common equity securities and warrants are expected to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

X-energy (USA) will receive a strategic investment of USD25 million from South Korea’s DL E&C and Doosan Enerbility. X Energy is making the XE-100 high temperature gas-cooled small modular reactor (SMR) as well as TRISO advanced nuclear fuel. They have a pebble-bed reactor.

China completed a similar commercial HTR-PM pebble bed reactor. In 2021, both nuclear reactors of the High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor-Pebble-bed Module (HTR-PM) at the Shidaowan plant in China’s Shandong province reached criticality for the first time. The HTR-PM has two 250 MW thermal reactors that drive a single 210 MWe turbine. China plans to make commercial 600 MWe pebble bed reactors (6×250 MWt, total 655 MWe).

The XE100 would have a new level of ultra-safe reactor.

Doosan—which will continue to work with X-energy as a major component and system vendor—will engineer, supply and manufacture key components for the Xe-100 plant, including the reactor pressure vessel, a critical component that contains the reactor core, composed largely of X-energy’s proprietary TRISO-X nuclear fuel. Doosan and X-energy also plan to jointly pursue diverse applications of the Xe-100 technology, such as efficient provision of power and heat to industrial processes like hydrogen production.

DL E&C—one of the world’s leading power and energy sector engineering and construction firms, having installed 51GW of power plants in 17 countries and participated in the construction of several nuclear plants—will work with X-energy to identify opportunities around the world to employ its renowned practices to support the deployment of Xe-100 plants on a global scale.

9 thoughts on “X-Energy SPAC and Other Funding”

      • SMR has some important steps to take, like submitting a COL. The NRC really scolded them with all the flaws in preliminary paperwork, and we need the utilities to not bolt from the Carbon Free Project with the new higher cost estimates, those same costs will impact solar and wind as well.
        I want the price to stay low so I can accumulate more.

  1. In other financial news:

    “Colossal Biosciences, the world’s first de-extinction company, just announced an oversubscribed $150M Series B financing run. Overshadowing the pomp and circumstance of a massive financial raise, and the fact that they are probably the first “de-extinction unicorn” with a valuation over 1 billion dollars, the company has also announced plans to return the Dodo bird from extinction.”

    See:

    https://thedebrief.org/de-extinction-company-colossal-gets-a-mammoth-investment-wants-to-resurrect-the-dodo/

    • This is kind of cool, even if useless. However, I am already calling it: Greenpeace is going to complain that if you de-extinguish extinct animals, people will be less careful of letting them go extinct in the first place.

        • Would resurrecting the passenger pigeon be more useful? Consider the statues of formerly heroic men in the Eastern Flyway which could be appropriately endorsed.

          • They are not formerly heroic, they were heroic, but they were long overdue for movement away from their former places. When the war ended,they became good US citizens, they didn’t keep confederate flags or bemoan their loss of the war.
            Clint Eastwood ,had one of the only movies sympathetic to the Southern side, of the Missouri border wars, in the Outlaw Joesy Wales.

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