Is everything bigger in Texas?
Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp last week announced that his university has surpassed even the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology and now has the nation’s largest nuclear engineering research department.
And just in time, because Sharp also announced that Texas A&M is offering land near its RELLIS Innovation and Technology campus, located on 2,400 acres in Bryan, Texas, to several nuclear reactor companies to build small modular reactors (SMRs).
“Plain and simple,” said Sharp, a former State Comptroller and former member of the Texas Railroad Commission, “the United States needs more power. And nowhere in the country, other than Texas, is anyone willing to step up and build the power plants we need.”
Chief executive officers from Kairos Power, Natura Resources, Terrestrial Energy, and Aalo Atomics have all agreed to work with the Texas A&M system to bring reactors to the RELLIS campus as part of a project dubbed “The Energy Proving Ground.”
Their common goal is to work toward building and testing commercial-ready technologies that within five years can bring more nuclear energy to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT, which manages the Texas grid) and eventually to an energy-hungry nation.
According to Sharp, the RELLIS campus is the first suitable location in the nation where reactor manufacturers and power-dependent companies in Big Tech can build clusters of small modular reactors to supply the power needed for artificial intelligence endeavors, data centers, and the electric grid.
The Texas A&M System is ready to do what is necessary for the country to thrive, Sharp added, thanks to the leadership of Governor Greg Abbott and others in Texas state government. Doubtless, the “Energy Proving Ground” project will also redirect top talent to the university.
Last November, Gov. Abbott announced the release of the final report of the Texas Advanced Nuclear Reactor Working Group. Just days later, he proclaimed that, “Texas is the energy capital of the world, and we’re ready to be No. 1 in advanced nuclear power.”
The Working Group, created by the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) at Abbott’s direction, had been tasked with evaluating the state’s plan to build “a world-leading advanced nuclear power industry to enhance electric reliability and energy security, promote economic development, and unleash new opportunities for the growing Texas workforce.”
The Working Group report said that advanced nuclear reactors will provide enhanced energy security by augmenting Texas electricity generation. Nuclear energy will provide power for urban centers, ports, oil and gas regions, industrial facilities, data centers, and military bases. Nuclear also improves ERCOT’s reliability, as nuclear is more reliable than coal, wind, or solar.
Because advanced SMRs can co-locate with data centers and support heavy industries, they can help create new, good-paying jobs, increase productivity, and bring revenues to households and the state treasury as they provide process heat, power desalination plants, and electrify oilfields.
A Bureau of Better Business report says that by 2055, deployment of SMRs in Texas could provide over $50 billion in new economic development and $27 billion in wages for Texas workers through employment of an average of 148,000 people directly or indirectly in construction, operations, and manufacturing.
Another outcome of this push for nuclear energy research and development is the potential for Texas to lead the nation in advanced nuclear power generation. Establishing Texas as the preferred supplier for U.S.-based ANR technology would open international opportunities especially to those who prefer an alternative to Chinese and Russian nuclear reactor technology.
The Working Group also made several recommendations for legislative actions to shore up the state’s ability to attract ANR projects, beginning with creation of a Texas Advanced Nuclear Authority, a nonregulatory entity to coordinate the state’s strategic nuclear vision and implement ANR policy.
Other recommendations included creation of:
- A Texas Nuclear Permitting Officer, a single point of contact for permitting.
- A workforce development program for community colleges and universities to support creating a homegrown nuclear workforce.
- A Texas Advanced Manufacturing Institute to help foster a nuclear ecosystem in Texas.
- A Texas nuclear public outreach program to inform and educate Texans about the benefits of advanced nuclear reactor technology through communications and public engagement.
- A Texas nuclear energy and supply chain fund that would be a direct-grant, cost-sharing program to incentivize early development and siting and to support supply chain and domestic manufacturing capacity.
- A Texas nuclear energy fund, modeled after the Texas Energy Fund, to overcome the funding valley project developers face in Texas.
To streamline the regulatory process to allow the four participating companies to quickly get their reactors operational, Texas A&M officials have already begun the application process with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for an Early Site Permit for potential development of commercial electrical and thermal power generation facilities. The site can accommodate multiple SMRs with a combined electrical output of more than 1 gigawatt.
Terrestrial Energy CEO Simon Irish hopes to develop an integral molten salt reactor (IMSR) at the Bryan site. Kairos Power CEO Mike Laufer plans to bring one or more commercial deployments to the site.
Natura Resources CEO Douglass Robison, whose company worked with the university for five years to develop its Natura MSR-1 demonstration system, will now concentrate on deployment of its commercial Natura MSR-100 system. And Aalo Atomics CEO Matt Loszak hopes to build up to six Aalo Pods at the site.
Another Texas-based nuclear power plant project is underway at Abilene Christian University, where Natura Resources is constructing a novel nuclear reactor that will generate reliable “carbon-free” energy while also desalinating water. In 2023, Natura built ACU’s new Science and Engineering Research Center, the first advanced reactor research facility outside a national laboratory in the United States.
Natura had already conducted a feasibility study at the Texas Produced Water Consortium, based at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. They found that, by operating the molten salt reactor at 600 degrees Celsius, it can generate up to 250 megawatts of electricity that can be used for desalination of produced water, other brackish water, or even sea water.
Reactor construction is expected to be completed by 2027, after which the Natura team will begin work on integrating systems to start water desalination. The molten salts, a mixture of lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride or thorium fluoride salts, act as both a fuel and a coolant.
Gov. Abbott believes that “by utilizing advanced nuclear energy, Texas will enhance the reliability of the state grid and provide affordable, dispatchable power to Texans.”
Building a Texas ANR industry will ensure that Texas remains a leader in energy, but Texas is hardly the only state working in that direction. Perhaps Texas’s biggest rival is based in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, home to Project Ike, a new nuclear energy development boosted by the new Tennessee Nuclear Energy Fund.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee says the fund, created by the Tennessee General Assembly with a $60 million budget in its inaugural year, was highly successful in recruiting nuclear energy projects, with four announced over a six-month period. Like Gov. Abbott, Gov. Lee wants to make Tennessee “the number one state for nuclear energy companies to invest and thrive.”
Power for the people – what a novel idea!
This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy
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That is great, except SMRs do not and will not solve the energy problem. There would need to be 300 times more of those tiny reactors than full scale reactors. Full scale advanced breeder reactors, e.g. 3 GW with thermal co-production can meet the global energy demand (in another 20 years) which will double to 314,000 TWh. That requires11,000 reactors, globally. We now have 500. Phenix in France worked at 100% before the moronic French government shut it down, 30 years ago.
Nuscale Power gangs 4 SMR’s together for a 300 MW plant that will be delivered from a cookie cutter identical reactor assembly line factory to the jobsite on semi trailers and up and running in 2 years. 10 such plants can be constructed where they are needed in the same time frame. There’s 3 GW in 2 years instead of 3 GW in 10 years or longer. Think about it. In a big hurry? Build a few more assembly line plants. SMR isn’t the best alternative in the West, It’s the only alternative for a lot of reasons including avoiding activist judicial obstruction.
Judges aren’t the problem, they rarely if ever get involved .. it’s grotesque over regulation by the US NRC, which is driven by Federal law which must be reformed.
Judges permit nonsense suits to go forward and are quick to issue restraining orders preventing construction from moving forward.
And where are these Nuscale SMR’s ? On their last financials, we can find $475 K in income, and $41 Million in costs but no construction sites…
NuScale Power is collaborating with Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction Co. (DHIC) in South Korea to manufacture components for their Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). The reactor housing is being cast at Doosan’s facility in Changwon, South Korea2. According to the information available, the project is on track, and the reactor is expected to be ready and begin commercial operation in the United States by 2029.
The NuScale Small Modular Reactor (SMR) project in Romania is progressing well! The project, a collaboration between NuScale Power, Nuclearelectrica, and RoPower Nuclear, aims to replace a former coal plant in Doicești with a six-module NuScale SMR plant. The project has received substantial funding and support from international partners, including the USA, Japan, South Korea, and the UAE.
Currently, the project is in the Front-End Engineering and Design (FEED) Phase 2 stage, with Fluor Corporation providing design and engineering services. The goal is to have the SMR plant operational by 2029..
NuScale Power’s Standard Design Approval (SDA) application for their small modular reactor (SMR) design, known as the US460, is currently under review by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The review process is expected to be completed by July 2025. NuScale has made significant progress, including receiving design approval and certification from the NRC, and starting production of long lead-time components.
NuScale’s SMR technology has also been selected by Standard Power for two facilities in Ohio and Pennsylvania, aiming to produce nearly 2 GW of clean energy.
Rolls Royce 470MWe units are the same size as have been used for years in the UK. and only slightly less than half the size of the big reactors now being built.
The ability to mass produce them is the key.
No. At what cost is the key.
The taxpayer of course is underwriting the latest Net Zero boondoggle. “Under the Low Cost Nuclear programme, the Government has given a grant of up to £210 million to Rolls-Royce SMR Ltd to support development of the Rolls Royce Small Modular Reactor (SMR) design…”
And that money is Government borrowing, which means we shall be laying the interest on it forever since Govt debt is never repaid, just rolled over and topped up.
And why when coal and gas are cheaper, quicker to build, smaller land footprint, efficient, proven technology, build nuclear reactors no matter how large or small?
When there is a stone in your shoe, wearing two pair of thicker socks, of getting isn’t the solution. Get rid of the stone!
Get rid of the climate change hoax (Note: Hoax = intentional to deceive or defraud) and then the energy “problem” is resolved.
Up until about 15 years ago there was no energy crisis, we had abundant, low cost, reliable electricity from coal and gas with some legacy nuclear. Nuclear, which had in Europe been taxpayer funded was on the way out as too expensive for private enterprise and in any case coal + gas mix gave lower consumer prices.
“The energy problem” is not as simplistic as you think. There are lots and lots of challenges involved in supplying sufficient electrical energy to the grid, no one “solution” will ever exist, at least not in our lifetimes. Modular reactors are proving extremely useful in powering concentrated load demands, as stated in this post, associated with AI and server farms. Or erecting power supplies for remote areas far from major power plant locations. Military applications are another demand.
Even in well populated urban areas, modular reactors will be manufactured individually, transported to the plant site and joined up. Need 600 MWe? Bring 12 50 MWe reactors together … or 6 100 MWe reactors, or 3 200 MWe reactors.
Even the big site built reactor plants involve multiple reactors. Having redundancy in power production is much safer and more reliable. If you have only two very large reactors, and one of them is shut down for maintenance, you just lost half your capacity. If you have 6 reactors, or 12 reactors, taking one down for maintenance means most of your capacity is still available.
Besides, the correct term is “modular reactors”, not “small modular reactors” a term usually abused and misunderstood. Modularizing reactor design has nothing to do with the size of the reactor – it is the way the reactor is designed, licensed, and manufactured to produce a relatively large quantity of fully proven reactors transported either in whole or in part to a plant site and assembled into a complete plant, rather than one-offing them with custom designs as has been the practice for the last 70 years.
Heck, the US Navy builds aircraft carriers, the largest warships in the world, on a modular basis. The ship’s hull and various components, including the massive twin reactors (300 MWe each), are built as modules then connected together at the shipyard to make a very large ship. That’s how we build other warships, including the very large fast attack and missile submarines – again, each hull section, complete with all the equipment, is manufactured as a module, each module weighing thousands of tons, then the modules are joined together.
Re “…the US Navy builds aircraft carriers, the largest warships in the world, on a modular basis. The ship’s hull and various components, including the massive twin reactors (300 MWe each) …”
So good to see this reminder of the Nuclear Navy (Navies), both carriers and submarines, which are so frequently overlooked in the discussion of the demise (& potential renaissance) of the commercial, i.e. non-military, nuclear power reactors.
The difference is federated systems versus integrated systems.
Instead of building one huge monument to glorify us, build 100 small units and put them where they are. It is not the energy output that is critical. It is the required energy input locally and to the national grid.
Consider the consequences if a massive plant shuts down. Now compare that to the consequences of a small plant shutting down.
It is all cost-risk-benefit.
The Columbia Generating Station goes off-line every two years for maintenance and partial refueling. Washington State has hydro and they coordinate. Wind in the region is not reliable so they cannot plan around that.
Please….open a campus in Australia!
Well thumbs up for Texas then. They can sell the surplus to California…,
Quite so: there are, in this world, two things you can count on – death and Texas.
I see what you did there.
Boo! Nuclear is as government dependent as wind and solar. No free-market proponent should support DOE subsidies (via the IRA) or Price Anderson.
In the year 2025 here in the United States, keeping nuclear power in the energy mix is strictly a public policy decision. We keep it for purposes of energy security and reliability, not because nuclear-generated electricity is the cheapest electricity we might buy.
If there is no Price Anderson coverage from the federal government, there is no nuclear power in the US. It’s that simple.
If that coverage was to be terminated on a certain date, every nuclear power plant in America would shut down the next day. Poof, 20% of the nation’s supply of electricity would be gone, just like that. Is this something you are prepared to do?
I am so tired of reading “good paying jobs.”
Just goes to show how debased our political / economic discourse is.
I think you mean “good paying union jobs” — quoting Demetia Joe.
In the last five years, we have seen any number of agreements being signed which in theory might result in the construction of either an SMR or a larger Gen III+ reactor.
But with a few rare exceptions, we don’t see these projects moving forward towards construction and eventual operation.
Last Energy, headquartered in Washington DC in the US, has entered into the licensing phase for its 20 MW SMR for a project in south Wales in the UK, targeted for completion by the end of 2027.
Their SMR is a down-sized pressurized water design (PWR) using air cooling. The reactor vessel itself is a conventional PWR in every way except for its small size.
Last Energy’s proposal is to install four of these 20 MW reactors at the decommissioned Llynfi power station in Bridgend, Wales.
Will these four reactors actually go on line by the end of 2027?
I’m skeptical. If this project goes forward at all, completion and startup by the end of 2029 or the middle of 2030 is a more likely outcome.
Suppose the Llynfi project actually does move forward. Will the project be delivered on budget and on schedule?
Only time will tell. But here’s the rub.
The Last Energy PWR is intended to be a cookie-cutter drop-in design. A serious potential problem is that the UK’s nuclear regulatory authority has a history of demanding lots of design changes which add little or nothing to basic nuclear safety, but which in the aggregate cost a lot of extra money to implement.
So the big question is this: Will the Last Energy standardized PWR design still be a drop-in cookie-cutter design once the UK’s nuclear regulators get through messing with it?
If the Llynfi facility design isn’t 80% complete by the time construction begins — and if all the UK-specific design modifications haven’t been reviewed, approved, and incorporated in a timely manner — one can guarantee that serious cost and schedule overruns will be experienced.
Georgia Tech used to have a research reactor on it’s campus. Some 30 years ago.
It was small, only a few kilowatts, but it was a fully functional reactor. One of only a handful of campuses in the country to have one.
The local numbnuts started a campaign amongst the nearby residents, scaring them with images of mushroom clouds and babies with 3 eyes. City officials ended up forcing Tech to shut down and dismantle the reactor.
My Co-op job was in a building right next to the reactor. Most of my classes were in the Physics and EE building, about a block from the reactor. My dorm was about 1/2 a mile from the reactor. Almost all of my time when at Tech, I was within a mile of that reactor.
Not once did I spend any time worrying about the reactor. Though I did try to make friends with a couple of physics students, hoping they could give me a tour of the reactor.
If memory serves correctly, the dome of the containment building was only about 20 to 25 feet across and not much more than 30 to 35 feet tall.
The unit didn’t even have a cooling tower. No need, it didn’t produce enough heat to require one.
UC Berkeley used to have a TRIGA MkIII (pulse) reactor underneath the volleyball cout next to Etcheverry Hall. It was removed in the 1980’s as the space was needed for the Software Engineering building. One of the uses was a neutron source for neutron activation analysis, which the most famous example was samples from the KT boundary.
KT boundary
I woke up one morning and found this: The K-T boundary, now more commonly referred to as the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary,
I can’t keep up!
More good news now get busy building nuclear power generators so we can start removing wind and solar from the grid.