A report commissioned by Abbott’s office proposed a Texas Nuclear Power Fund. The task force report calls on the Texas Legislature to pass a slate of bills supporting nuclear power, including creating a university research network, providing government grants to build a technology supply chain and bolstering the nuclear power supply chain.
“Texas is the energy capital of the world, and we are ready to be No. 1 in advanced nuclear power,” Abbott said in a news release. “By utilizing advanced nuclear energy, Texas will enhance the reliability of the state grid and provide affordable, dispatchable power to Texans across the state.”
Public Utility Commissioner Jimmy Glotfelty, an Abbott appointee to the state’s energy regulatory board and head of the governor’s Texas Advanced Nuclear Reactor Working Group, said the proposed Texas Nuclear Energy Fund would be similar to a $5 billion loan program lawmakers created in 2023 that offers taxpayer-backed, 3 percent interest loans to companies that build natural gas power plants.
“We hope that the Legislature will agree that [the fund] mitigates risk,” Glotfelty said Monday at a nuclear power conference in Austin, adding that loans would fund roughly 60 percent of development costs and would be repaid over 20 to 25 years. “We’re helping reduce the front-end cost by putting state dollars to work.”
The Public Utility Commission advanced several applications for proposed natural gas power plants for loans earlier this year, although the program has faced lawmaker scrutiny after one of the proposals was headed by a woman convicted of a federal crime. The commission has since removed that application from contention.
The fund’s administrator, Deloitte, refunded $7.3 million of its contract over failing to question that proposal. The accounting firm is conducting a due diligence review of loan applications that is expected to take up to eight months, according to PUC spokeswoman Ellie Breed.
The Texas power grid has four large nuclear power units at two sites, including two units at Comanche Peak about 80 miles southwest of Dallas, that on a typical day generate enough electricity to power about 1 million homes.
Comanche Peak’s second unit, completed in 1993, is the most recent large nuclear reactor to come online in Texas.
Over the past year, Texas has seen signs of a changing nuclear landscape.
In September, federal regulators approved a research lab at Abilene Christian Universityas the site of the first research reactor nationwide in more than 40 years. The Texas A&M University System has also shown strong support for nuclear power, setting aside 200 to 300 acres of university land to create a proving ground for small nuclear reactors, A&M Chancellor John Sharp told The Dallas Morning News last week.
After A&M signaled its interest in creating a home for small modular reactors, 41 companies submitted proposals, a response Sharp called “overwhelming.”
“We started talking to some of these companies, and they said we need a test bed. We need a place to put these facilities,” he said.
A&M regents have begun the federal permitting process to get the university land approved for nuclear energy projects. Federal approval would clear a major obstacle for many companies that have shown interest.
At the Texas Nuclear Summit in Austin on Monday, Glotfelty said industry leaders will need to sell nuclear power to state lawmakers and those in the public who might be skeptical of the technology.
“We’ve got to have coordinated effort to help people understand that Texas is not Chernobyl, that nuclear is not Three Mile Island and Fukushima,” Glotfelty said.
The public perception of nuclear power has been gradually changing, with a majority of U.S. residents now in favor of expanding its use, according to Pew Research Center. But far more people favor building solar and wind power.
Like solar and wind power, nuclear power creates very few greenhouse gas emissions compared to fossil fuel power plants. The emissions are major contributors to climate change.
At the summit, industry insiders said Texas can lead in nuclear power because its laissez-faire energy market makes it easier than any other state to build nuclear reactors. The state’s growing power demand also creates economic incentives to build.
But public opinion of the technology is paramount to its success.
“This is a nuclear renaissance that we have to take advantage of, and we have to be aggressive about it,” Stephen Perkins, chief operating officer of the American Conservation Coalition, said at the nuclear conference.
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