HOUSTON – The State of Texas plans to move forward with nuclear energy plans dedicated to relieving stress on our grid system.
KPRC 2 Investigates Robert Arnold showed the new generation of nuclear reactors is far smaller in size and cost than traditional nuclear plants.
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In a recent interview, Texas State Senator Paul Bettencourt shared the state’s vision to use small modular nuclear reactors, commonly called SMRs.
“We’re trying to do everything we can to incentivize what we would originally call ‘baseload energy,’ which the public may understand is not renewable. It’s not wind or solar. The reason is that wind and solar are great when you have them,” said Sen. Bettencourt. “But you have to have enough base energy to be able to maintain all the activities that everybody’s accustomed to in the modern 21st century.”
He says, unlike the large 1,200-megawatt reactors we currently use, SMRs range from 100-300-megawatts. The design allows officials to produce and deploy SMRs at a much faster rate than the old reactors. The plan would be to deploy these facilities in different parts of the state to help power remote areas, and artificial intelligence operations and provide more reliability to our grid.
Bettencourt says what makes SMRs a viable option for Texas is the “walk-away” safety measures built into these designs. This means human or mechanical intervention is not needed to prevent a leak in the event of a disaster or sudden loss of power.
“The design of these reactors means that you might have uranium encased in graphite and thorium salt reactors as the coolant pouring out of the ground in the worst case [scenario]. But then it solidifies and that’s the end of it,” said the state senator. “So, it’s just a completely different mindset than this, you know end of the world, you know Chernobyl.”
Texas 2030 SMR Vision
The federal government certified the first SMR design in 2023 from the NuScale Power company. X-Energy and DOW have a partnership to build a working SMR at DOW’s Seadrift, Texas facility, which is about 2.5 hours southwest of Houston. The company’s report construction is anticipated to begin in 2026, but final federal approval has not yet been given on the project.
Sen. Bettencourt says the state wants to use the next three years to get things moving, including completing site surveys for the placement of SMRs and the production of SMRs.
“All of this takes time to build one of these effectively, it’s multiple years. And even though we have approval from the feds for the first few, we’ll see what the new Trump administration does on ramping up these approvals a lot faster,” Sen. Bettencourt adds.
Those approvals could mean the creation of a new state commission overseeing SMRs and where they are going.
The Texas Advanced Nuclear Reactor Working Group gave lawmakers seven recommendations to consider:
1. Texas Advanced Nuclear Energy Authority
2. Texas Nuclear Permitting Officer
3. Workforce Development Program for Community Colleges and Universities
4. Texas Advance Manufacturing Institute
5. Texas Nuclear Public Outreach Program
6. Texas Nuclear Energy and Supply Chain Fund
7. Texas Nuclear Energy Fund
