Kentucky, X-energy collaborate on potential deployments

Recent attention: Kentucky, one of the nation’s top coal producers, is also one of the few U.S. states east of the Mississippi River that has never been home to a nuclear power plant. Today, its most notable nuclear facility is the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a uranium enrichment facility that closed its doors in 2013. Momentum around the state’s nuclear sector began to grow in 2024, when Senate Bill 198 established the Kentucky Nuclear Energy Development Authority. KNEDA is a nonregulatory agency tasked with supporting nuclear development in the state.

In March, KNEDA distributed $10 million in grants to six different organizations looking to develop nuclear resources in the state. Those awards went to two enrichment companies, three workforce development programs, and American Electric Power, which is currently looking into its own small reactor project in the state.

In April, Gov. Andy Beshear signed Senate Bill 57 into law, creating a Nuclear Reactor Site Readiness Pilot Program. That program authorizes the state legislature to award grants covering up to one-third of an applicant’s costs occurred by obtaining early site permits, construction permits, or operating licenses for nuclear projects.

Meanwhile, as remediation work continues at the Paducah site, two enrichment companies have announced plans to move in. Global Laser Enrichment has spent the past two years working to build new laser enrichment capacity at a site adjacent to the former Paducah site, and recently received an incentive from the state and McCracken County to support the project.

General Matter announced in August 2025 that the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management had signed a lease with the enrichment startup for the reuse of a 100-acre parcel of federal land for a new private-sector uranium enrichment facility.

X-energy: X-energy is developing the Xe-100, an 80-MWe high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor. Its flagship project seeks to deploy four of these reactors at Dow’s UCC Seadrift Operations manufacturing site. In March 2025, the company submitted a construction permit application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Last month, the company made waves by launching its initial public offering. Trading on the Nasdaq under ticker XE, investor interest was stronger than anticipated, and the company raised over $1 billion.

X-energy–Kentucky: The details of this new collaboration between LG&E, KU, and X-energy are, for now, relatively sparse. X-energy stated that the companies “have begun early project feasibility activities and will explore opportunities for SMR deployments to support long-term grid reliability across the Commonwealth, and large load customers, including data centers.”

John R. Crockett III, president of LG&E and KU, added, “On the heels of the Nuclear Reactor Site Readiness Pilot Program being signed into law this month, we’re proud to work with X-energy to explore bringing nuclear energy to Kentucky to support the significant pipeline of new projects in our service territories where large-load customers can support the cost structure.”