In Abilene, about 200 miles west of Dallas, Natura Resources is building the nation’s first advanced liquid-fuel research reactor in nearly 40 years. The project is housed at Abilene Christian University, where a $25 million research facility was completed in September 2023.
Natura has raised $120 million in private funding and received another $120 million from the Legislature.
Natura’s technology uses molten salt as both fuel and coolant — a design last tested at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1960s. The company is first building a 1-megawatt research reactor in Abilene, intended to demonstrate to regulators and investors that the technology works and is safe.
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Aalo Atomics is taking a different approach. The startup, founded by Canadian-born engineer Matt Loszak and based in Austin, is designing a sodium-cooled fast reactor, a technology that uses solid fuel, like conventional nuclear plants, built specifically for factory mass production.
Each unit would produce 10 megawatts, enough to power roughly 6,000 to 7,000 homes in Texas, and the reactors will be sized to fit on a standard truck. Aalo’s commercial model would consist of five of these units, totaling 50 megawatts.
Loszak said the company plans to activate its first 10 megawatt test reactor within about five months, after completing prototype testing at the end of December, as part of its effort to move toward commercial deployment.
We’ve been spared any serious natural disasters affecting the grid during that time. No major hurricanes. No big freeze.
The worst event was the 2024 derecho, and that definitely knocked out power here and there. But it was high enough above the treeline to really wreck infrastructure at the ground level.
I’ll note that a huge increase in wind and solar capacity means we aren’t exposed to the same kind of economic pressure from five years ago, either. The '21 freeze came, in large part, due to gas power plants locking up when they were needed, because they hadn’t been weatherized. With less acute demand issues (thanks to new green energy) we haven’t been in a position where gas plants could casually wait for prices to spike before turning on.
Huh? There was a big freeze like a month ago in the east.
And the event led to over 100,000 power outages in the region, most of which came back in a day or two. But that paled beside '21, which took out multiple major metro areas statewide.