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.
Lol, typical American centric article.
Just outside Toronto, they’re building four 300MW small modular reactors, at an existing nuclear plant, using proven designs from Hitachi, and the first one is targeted to come online by 2029 or 2030, eclipsing the Texas projects in scale, timeline, and practicality, but that literally doesn’t even get a passing mention.
4 years to build a power plant is still fucking stupid when you could install 10x the solar and battery capacity in that time.
The website is called The Texas Tribune. They write articles about Texas. I really don’t know why you expected them to mention Canada.
The posted headline is literally “Texas become leading ground for testing small modular reactors”.
That inherently implies that places that aren’t Texas, are not becoming leading grounds for testing small modular reactors, bringing those other places into the discussion.
Right now that’s not the headline I’m seeing on the article though, so either they’re A/B testing headlines or OP editorialized.
People in Texas aren’t known for their intellectual prowess. It’s like the Florida of the western half of the us.
It’s not really western…
I meant divided in half
Fair enough point. And while it’s not the article’s headline, that is the tab’s label when you open it.
They are referring to the expert comments here about how SMRs can’t be used for grid electricity, radiation leaks, etc.
They would rather breathe in that clean coal.
300mw are indeed a much different scale from 10mw.
I wonder if your ire is misplaced… As these are sort of different things. The 10mw reactors have different use cases, they’re not really designed to be installed as part of a power plant, but more for individual on-site uses, like as a reserve power system for a hospital, or as power for a remote mining location, disconnected from the grid.
My point is just, it might make sense to not mention the larger reactors here, as they’re not really the same.
Yeah, these guys really have their heads up their asses on this.
I’m sure Texas will do it in the dumbest most unregulated way possible. It will be a good example of what not to do.
Not winterize them, because the feds can’t tell us what to do, and then have it melt down in the next polar inversion, of which they got one this year again. It’s going to be a regular occurrence now with the global weirding.
Modern reactors don’t really melt down like the first few generations did. And even so, it would still be less radioactive waste than coal power.
As if we can trust anything you say after that statistic you just proffered and responded with another outlandish claim when asked what methadology was used for you coal comparison.
You’re more than welcome to type a few words into Google to see that I’m right.
But since you want to be spoon fed information, Here you go
budgeted at 17.5c/watt (CAD), that too is a boondoggle before additional Ontario taxpayer corruption.
They’re not in the same game.
So how long until it’s small enough to power a Pip-boy?
Asking the real questions