San Antonio Bay Waterkeeper Petition Granted by NRC, Dow/X-Energy Plans for ‘Small Modular Reactor’ in Long Mott, TX in Doubt
For Immediate Release
LONG MOTT, TX – February 3, 2026 – San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper’s (Waterkeeper) petition to intervene was granted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, finding financial concerns raised by the local petitioners merit further consideration in Dow/X-Energy’s application to construct four small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) in Seadrift, Texas—one of the first such projects in the world.
Waterkeeper, representing local fisherpeople and community members on the Texas Gulf Coast, petitioned the NRC in 2025 to reject the construction permit application for four pebble-bed nuclear reactors (Long Mott Generating Station, LMGS) submitted by Dow/Union Carbide subsidiary Long Mott Energy (LME). The petition contends that, “LME (Long Mott Energy) has failed to demonstrate its financial qualifications to build and operate the LMGS (Long Mott Generating Station.” The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board granted Waterkeeper standing and will conduct a hearing on the contention, which could ultimately result in a denial of the construction permit application. Financial concerns surrounding the proposed Dow/X-Energy proposal were magnified earlier this week when chemical giant Dow announced it would be cutting 4,500 jobs, nearly 15 percent of its workforce, with many of those jobs based in Texas and Seadrift specifically.
“We are pleased that the petition was granted, and we’re looking forward to participating in a hearing and litigating the financial qualifications contention that was admitted,” said Marisa Perales of Perales, Allmon & Ice, P.C., representing Waterkeeper. “However, we are disappointed that the other issues we raised–issues related to the novelty of the design of the proposed facility and the safety concerns it presents–were not admitted. It’s a missed opportunity for the NRC and the public to scrutinize whether this proposed, novel facility will be adequately protective of the public and the environment, particularly since the existing rules do not contemplate and were not written for this type of facility.”
Waterkeeper charged in its petition filed in 2025 that these first-of-a-kind nuclear reactors raise significant safety and nuclear waste concerns, and that LME has not sufficiently demonstrated its financial qualifications to build the reactors in compliance with NRC regulations. The application does not provide the required amount of detail and evidence that LME, the newly formed, limited liability subsidiary Dow created to build the nuclear reactors, will gain access to the amount it would cost to build it. The petition further claims the company overestimates the amount of taxpayer subsidies the federal government has committed to help Dow pay for the reactors.
“Dow is laying off thousands of Texans while at the same time seeking to build a wildly expensive experimental nuclear reactor in our backyard. We are pleased the NRC is taking a closer look under the hood on this horrible project, which puts our most vulnerable fishing communities and wildlife in immense danger,” said Diane Wilson, executive director of San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper and 2023 Goldman Environmental Prize winner. “Waterkeeper won’t stop until this radioactive experiment on South Texas and our bay is terminated.”
The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board rejected (on a technicality) a contention that challenged a major safety flaw in the X-Energy Xe-100 design (as well as many other new nuclear reactors being proposed around the United States): the lack of a thick and leak-tight containment structure designed to limit releases of long-lived radioactive poisons from the reactor in the event of an accident causing damage to the nuclear fuel.
According to Dr. Edwin Lyman, a physicist and expert on nuclear safety, the absence of a containment was a major reason why the Chernobyl reactor disaster in the former Soviet Union resulted in widespread radiological contamination across the Northern Hemisphere. LME claims that its reactors don’t need containment because the type of fuel, known as TRISO, is so robust that it will prevent harmful levels of radioactivity from being released even in serious accidents. However, these claims are wildly overblown and not supported by the science, according to Dr. Lyman. LME’s own construction permit application shows that during certain accidents the TRISO fuel in the reactor could reach temperatures approaching 2000 degrees Celsius (over 3,400 degrees Fahrenheit)—causing the fuel coatings to fail and release significant quantities of radioactive fission products. Dr. Lyman also noted there are major gaps in the data supporting the safety case for Long Mott’s TRISO fuel, but the fuel testing program the company is conducting is not projected to be completed until construction of the reactors is well underway.
“The Board’s decision to ignore critical evidence and accept Long Mott Energy’s unjustified assertion that containment-free reactors can satisfy NRC’s regulations poses a direct threat to the health and safety of Texans and the broader U.S. public,” said Dr. Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit group. “Long Mott Energy will still need to prove its claims later to obtain NRC operating licenses for these reactors, but even if the fuel proves defective there is no way that the NRC would order the company to retrofit the reactors with containments after they are built.”
Each of the four reactors would have approximately 220,000 tennis-ball-sized fuel pebbles made of coated uranium (TRISO) particles contained in graphite, which will move down through the reactor as it operates as in a huge gumball machine. Although TRISO fuel has been billed by nuclear power promoters as “the most robust fuel on Earth,” it is susceptible to damage during both normal operation and accidents.
Union Carbide, a subsidiary of Dow and named applicant in the license application, is most widely known for the worst industrial disaster in history, the 1984 Bhopal, India gas leak at a pesticide plant owned and operated by Union Carbide India Limited, which resulted in 3,787 confirmed deaths and over 500,000 injuries. Dow assumed financial responsibility for the disaster when it purchased Union Carbide in 2001.
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MEDIA CONTACTS
Alex Frank, 703-276-3264, afrank@hastingsgroupmedia.com
Diane Wilson, 361-218-2353, wilsonalamobay@aol.com
Marisa Perales, Esq., 512-469-6000, marisa@txenvirolaw.com
Dr. Edwin Lyman, 202-853-8210, elyman@ucusa.org