Will Texas Become ‘the Epicenter of a National Nuclear Renaissance’?

Texas lawmakers are considering a bill to resuscitate the state’s nuclear power industry through a taxpayer-funded incentives program. State Rep. Cody Harris, a Republican from Palestine in East Texas, proposed allocating $2 billion toward a fund to create the Texas Advanced Nuclear Deployment Office. 

The bill proposes using public dollars to help fund nuclear construction, provide grants for reactors and fund development research. HB 14 would also create a state coordinator to assist in the state and federal permitting processes. 

Harris told members of the Texas House’s Committee on State Affairs last week that Texas needs long-term energy solutions as the strain on the state’s electric grid increases from the expansion of data centers and other energy-intensive industries. 

Texas has become too reliant on intermittent energy sources like wind and solar, he said. Harris called investing in nuclear energy a strategic imperative for the U.S. A global race for energy dominance is underway with immense national security implications, he said.

“By passing this bill, Texas will become the epicenter of a national nuclear renaissance,” Harris said. “Texas will attract billions in private capital investments and create tens of thousands of high-wage jobs for Texans up and down the nuclear value chain.” 

A week earlier, at the annual energy conference CERAWeek in Houston, nuclear power was being highly touted by both U.S. government officials and Big Tech. 

Throughout the conference, nuclear reactors were described as an answer for the increasing power demands from data centers and artificial intelligence—if the technology can scale. 

Texas’ electric grid has four large nuclear power units at two sites, including two at Comanche Peak, located some 60 miles southwest of Fort Worth. On a typical day, they produce enough electricity to power more than 1 million homes, according to the plant’s owner, Vistra Corp. 

Comanche Peak’s second unit, completed in 1993, is the most recent large nuclear reactor to come online in Texas.

A small, one megawatt molten salt test reactor is under construction beneath a newly completed laboratory at Abilene Christian University, in an underground trench. Abilene-based Natura Resources is one of just two companies with permits from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct a so-called “advanced” reactor that is set to be completed in 2027. 

The other company, California-based Kairos Power, is building its 35-megawatt test reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the 80-year capital of American nuclear power science. 

Gov. Greg Abbott has been bullish in recent years about making Texas a leader in nuclear power. In August 2023, Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas to form a working group to study and plan for the use of advanced nuclear reactors across the state. 

That task force recommended in November 2024 the state put aside $5 billion toward a nuclear fund. Former Public Utility Commission of Texas member Jimmy Glotfelty testified in support of the new bill at last week’s hearing after spending 14 months on the task force. 

He said the bill would put Texas on the path to being a leader of a renewed nuclear industry. If done right, long-term, Texas could see an addition of more than 100,000 jobs and more than $50 billion to the state economy, Glotfelty said, based on an economic study the task force commissioned from the Bureau of Business Research at the University of Texas at Austin. 

“Everybody in the nuclear space would like to build plants here in Texas,” Glotfelty said. “We are the low regulatory, low cost state. We have the supply chain. We have the labor. And what this bill will do will put us a leg up on every other state.” 

NextEra Energy Resources, a Florida-based clean energy power company, is considering bringing its shuttered nuclear plant in Iowa back online. It’s a move that a few years ago, NextEra wouldn’t have even thought about, said Michele Wheeler, the company’s vice president of regulatory and political affairs. 

The company is also working with Dow and X-energy as the two companies develop an advanced small nuclear reactor technology at a Seadrift, Texas, site. It’s based on high-temperature gas-cooled reactor technology, whereas Natura Resources’ project in Abilene uses liquid-fueled and molten salt-cooled technology.

In order for American production of nuclear power to be affordable and successful, someone has to be first, Wheeler said. “Everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ll be second,’ right? So how do you make the right incentives for those that go first to have the upside and the benefit of taking the risk?” Wheeler said at a breakfast session at CERAWeek about Texas power. 

“Everybody in the nuclear space would like to build plants here in Texas.”

— Jimmy Glotfelty, former Public Utility Commission of Texas member

That’s where Texas can step in, said Thomas Gleeson, chairman of the Texas Public Utility Commission. With a $23 billion surplus, the state has the ability to partner with private industry to ensure Texas leads the way with nuclear power, Gleeson said. 

Gleeson sees nuclear as a solution to the massive new power demands in the state’s forecasts. As he travels the country, he’s been telling people that Texas is not in an energy transition but an energy expansion. 

“I need more of pretty much everything,” Gleeson said. “If you care about the environment, if you care about clean air, I’m glad that you love batteries and I’m glad that you love wind, I’m glad that you love solar. Fall in love with nuclear—it has to be a part of the solution.” 

Despite some of the energy sector’s efforts to bring low-carbon power online, the development of nuclear power has been thwarted by worries of disaster, radioactive waste, a history of projects far exceeding budget and its infamously laborious regulatory requirements. 

But nuclear is seemingly having its moment with bipartisan support. Texas Republicans laud the power source’s reliability as they express concern about more of the state’s daily energy demand being met by less expensive but intermittent wind and solar. State Democrats, meanwhile, support adding more low-carbon energy to the grid.

Opponents of the bill called the incentive program a taxpayer handout and urged the power sector to compete in the state’s open energy market. 

Cyrus Reed, the conservation and legislative director of the Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter, said unlike the Texas Energy Fund, a piece of legislation that passed in 2023 that awards grants and loans to finance dispatchable, or on demand, generation facilities in Texas, the proposed nuclear fund consists only of grants. 

“That’s a very different proposal,” Reed said. 

John Umphress, a retired Austin Energy program specialist who is evaluating the nuclear efforts on contract for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, also expressed his concern about funding developers of small modular reactors with public dollars. 

The bill outlines three tiers for the funding program. The first tier provides a reimbursement grant for the costs associated with the initial development of an advanced nuclear reactor. It includes expenses like technology development, site planning, design and early permit work for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 

The second tier includes grants of up to $200 million for construction costs for projects with permits under review by the NRC. The third tier awards grants for operating costs once projects are finished. 

Both Reed and Umphress warned that companies could see money solely for securing a permit. Such grants, they believe, go beyond a fair incentive. 

“They may never, ever operate on the actual grid and they could have up to $200 million of taxpayer funds,” Reed said. “That seems wrong to us.”