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.
Idk it’s a problem still for the people that were charged ten thousand dollars for a week’s worth of electricity, especially if they had automatic withdrawals.
Frankly that’s the customers fault. It’s like taking out an ARM based mortgage. You’re gambling that the rates will stay low and then bitch if they spike. The people that were affected opted in to a variable rate plan to take advantage of lower commercial prices, then started bitching when it spiked. Coupled with automatic withdrawal meant they thought “it would never happen to me!”
Victim blaming. Deregulation of energy always leads to less service for more money, from Enron to now. Especially in texas.
I can’t imagine defending a group that through their own greed failed to do their job and responded by overcharging a thousand times their victims. Talk about losing any credibility.
No, it’s called making an informed choice. Down in South Texas that variable rating wasn’t even an option because our energy provider doesn’t do that. So what happened? Absolutely nothing. The provider ate most of it.
Where that happened is in Dallas, where there are at least 4 separate utility providers that you can shop around for. And of those 4 they have different plans including fixed rate plans. I.e. plans where your bill wouldn’t have shot through the roof.
So it very much was a customer issue, and didn’t happen to everyone. No one was forced to chose those plans.
No one forced you to defend the rich gouging working people, charging them up to a year’s salary for 10 dollars of electricity. To defend that, it’s incredible, typical victim blaming, borne from Fox News and their ilk campaigning against the poor, breeding outright contempt and hate for them, encouraging people to celebrate them getting hurt.
Because they are cheating them, and bullies always accuse their victims to justify abusing them. You side with the bullies, stealing tens of thousands of dollars when their wallet opened up to pay for 10 dollars worth of product, or less.
Man, someone seriously pissed in your Cheerios. I’m not defending them at all. My point since the beginning has always been that if you are trying to get away with gambling on the system. At some point you will lose. That is 100% on you. Doesn’t matter if it’s betting, ARMs, variable rate electricity, whatever.
I don’t even think everyone had the option of not getting a variable pricing, but even if they all did have the choice, no one would assume the companies would charge over a thousand times the going rate of electricity. How you could defend that is just astonishing. Yes it’s their fault for not realizing the should choose the option that gives a flat rate, and not try to save some money using more electricity when prices are lower, as clearly the industry would fail and charge them a year’s salary for a week’s electricity.
It’s their fault, for not realizing they were going to be gouged to a ruinous extent, after those companies failed in their duty, and that their politicians would abandon them, and have abandoned them already?
That’s where you’re wrong. The wholesale pricing is very much optional with a few providers, some don’t even offer it. It is not something you’re forced in to, nor is it the norm. It’s basically a plan you have to go looking for an choose.
Variable rate plans are basically always bad for the consumers.
Agreed. Which is why I think anyone trying to use them is either greedy or woefully uneducated. It’s why I mentioned ARMs in my original post. People are gambling and think they’ll be able to game the system for the life of the loan and then something goes sideways. Same thing with electric.