Cascade Advanced Energy Facility

Executive Overview

The Cascade Advanced Energy Facility is a 960 MW advanced nuclear project under development just north of Richland, Washington, using X-energy's Xe-100 high-temperature gas-cooled small modular reactor (SMR) technology. The project is owned and operated by Energy Northwest, with Amazon directly financing construction — a structure chosen to improve execution certainty for a first-of-a-kind reactor design. The full facility comprises 12 Xe-100 units across three phases of four reactors each, with an initial 320 MW phase targeted first. Construction is expected to begin by end of decade, with electricity generation in the early 2030s.

How It Works & Differentiation

The Xe-100 is a pebble-bed, helium-cooled reactor operating at temperatures above 750°C, with each unit generating 80 MWe from a core containing over 200,000 graphite pebbles, each embedded with approximately 18,000 TRISO fuel particles. The reactor's passive safety design and high operating temperature differentiate it from light water reactors, and the modular four-unit pack — producing 320 MW of electricity from 800 MWth of thermal output — fits within a few city blocks, compared to a square mile or more for a conventional 1 GW plant. X-energy's dedicated TRISO-X fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, produces up to 700,000 fuel pebbles per year, enough to supply up to 11 Xe-100 reactors annually, with NRC regulatory approval anticipated by May 2026. The full 960 MW build-out would augment the adjacent 1,207 MW Columbia Generating Station, the Pacific Northwest's only existing nuclear plant.

Commercialization & Traction

Amazon is directly financing construction rather than entering a power purchase agreement, with power flowing to Energy Northwest which in turn supplies Amazon's nearby data centers — a structure Amazon's Climate Fund director stated improves the odds of completion for a first-of-a-kind project. The broader Amazon-X-energy partnership targets 5 GW of nuclear capacity across the U.S. by 2039. The Cascade project will create over 1,000 construction jobs and more than 100 permanent positions. A workforce training simulator replicating the Xe-100 control room has been funded by the DOE at Columbia Basin College in Pasco, Washington, supporting the regional talent pipeline ahead of construction.

Scalability & Strategic Context

The Cascade facility's phased structure — four reactors in the first phase, expandable to twelve — allows Energy Northwest and Amazon to validate the technology at 320 MW before committing to full build-out, limiting financial exposure at each stage. The project draws on the Pacific Northwest's growing power demand, which is projected to rise from a current average load of approximately 22,000 MW to between 31,000 and 44,000 MW by 2046. Washington's Clean Energy Transformation Act, which requires a greenhouse gas–free electric supply by 2045, provides the regulatory backdrop for long-term investment. The Amazon-X-energy relationship also includes agreements with South Korea's Doosan Enerbility and Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. to accelerate broader SMR deployment, extending the strategic reach of the Cascade platform beyond a single site.