Wedoany.com Report-Feb 6, Texas A&M University, home to one of the top nuclear engineering programs in the U.S., plans to host four different companies who would build small modular reactors (SMRs) near the school’s campus.
Chancellor John Sharp made the announcement Tuesday, saying: “Plain and simple: the United States needs more power.”
Chief executive officers from Kairos Power, Natura Resources, Terrestrial Energy and Aalo Atomics have all agreed to work with the school to bring their reactors to Texas A&M-RELLIS, a 2,400-acre technology and innovation campus in Bryan, Texas.
The project is being dubbed “The Energy Proving Ground.”
“Until now, reactor manufacturers – along with the most powerful names in Big Tech – have not been able to find a suitable place to build clusters of nuclear reactors that can supply the power needed for artificial intelligence endeavors, data centers and other projects,” the university said in a statement.
At the site, the companies will work toward bringing commercial-ready technologies and test the latest prototypes at the site.
The first reactors could be constructed within five years, the university said. Once completed, power generated at the proving ground could supply power to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).
The proposed site at Texas A&M-RELLIS is projected to accommodate multiple SMRs, with a combined electrical output of more than one gigawatt.
Mike Laufer, co-founder and CEO of Kairos Power, said his company could bring one or more commercial deployments to the site.
“We are excited about the momentum for new nuclear deployment at Texas A&M-RELLIS and its potential to support U.S. energy security and continued economic growth,” said Laufer.
Douglass Robison, the founder and CEO of Natura Resources, said that Texas A&M has been an integral partner in collaborating with the company to develop the Natura MSR-1 demonstration system.
“We are thrilled to continue this partnership with the Texas A&M System to deploy our commercial system, the Natura MSR-100, on the Texas A&M-RELLIS campus,” Robison said. “We plan to showcase how our technology can address the energy needs of Texas and the nation.”
Texas is bullish on nuclear power. A working group, formed by the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) at the direction of Governor Greg Abbott, argued that Texas has “all the resources necessary to lead” in advanced nuclear. This includes the workforce to support large construction and manufacturing projects, the funding for investment and 61 existing sites that the group said were evaluated and ready for potential use.
The group also said advanced nuclear would reliably support power-hungry customers like industrial facilities, data centers, military bases and more.
“Texas is the energy capital of the world, and we are ready to be No. 1 in advanced nuclear power,” said Gov. Abbott.
In 2023, Dow announced its UCC1 Seadrift Operations manufacturing site for the location of an X-Energy small modular reactor (SMR) project. The advanced nuclear project would provide the Seadrift site with power and steam as existing assets near their end-of-life.
Located on the Gulf of Mexico coast, Dow’s Seadrift site covers 4,700 acres and manufactures more than 4 million pounds of materials per year used across a wide variety of applications, including food packaging and preservation, footwear, wire and cable insulation, solar cell membranes, and packaging for medical and pharmaceutical products.
The Seadrift project would be the first grid-scale advanced nuclear reactor deployed to serve an industrial site in North America. It could be commercially online by the end of the decade, Dow has said.
