Paragon Energy Solutions, a Fort Worth-based supplier of safety-related products and components for the nuclear industry, announced that it entered into a preferred supplier agreement with X-energy Reactor Co., a developer of small modular nuclear reactor and fuel technology for clean energy generation.
“Paragon continues to partner with companies like X-energy to find optimal solutions that ensure safe operation of nuclear reactors. Paragon’s HIPS FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) system, which has been approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for use in nuclear protection systems, is an important part of this safety equation,” Paragon President and CEO Doug VanTassell said in a statement.
Under the agreement, Paragon said it is the exclusive worldwide supplier for three key instrumentation and control systems for the Xe-100 advanced nuclear reactor: the Reactor Protection System (RPS), the Post-Event Monitoring System, and the Neutron Instrumentation System.
Paragon is supporting Rockville, Maryland-based X-energy’s pioneering Xe-100 reactor design, which couples scalability, innovative modularity, enhanced safety, and higher temperature capabilities with decades of high-temperature gas reactor research and operating experience.
Next-gen nuclear technology
“We are thrilled to continue our partnership with Paragon on these critical safety mechanisms and seeding a supply chain of best-in-class technology and capabilities,” X-energy CEO Clay Sell said in a statement. “Safety is the most important objective of our company, our people, and our products—and Paragon is helping us achieve those goals. This partnership allows us and Paragon to ensure a system that is more effective and secure, and less costly and complex than legacy systems used by older nuclear power plants. Working together we will advance this latest and greatest next-generation nuclear technology.”
X-energy has worked with Paragon to develop, deliver, install, and test the RPS prototype system for the plant simulator.
Paragon said it has been chosen to build and deliver the four-division RPS to all Xe-100 plants around the world when they are deployed. The RPS is a set of independent and redundant instrumentation and control components that enable the nuclear reactor to automatically and safely shut down, providing an added layer of protection for the plant and its environment, according to Paragon.
$1.2 billion in federal cost-shared funding
The company said that the prototype delivery is a milestone in X-energy’s progress toward completing the Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. X-energy was selected by the DOE to receive up to $1.2 billion of federal cost-shared funding to develop, license, build, and demonstrate an operational Xe-100-based nuclear power plant by the end of the decade.
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