Texas has become the most active proving ground in the United States for small and advanced nuclear reactors, with multiple projects now moving through federal licensing, state funding channels, and university campuses simultaneously. The convergence of a $350 million state investment, at least three distinct reactor technologies seeking permits or construction, and a federal deadline pushing developers toward rapid deployment has created a competitive environment unlike anything the domestic nuclear industry has seen in decades. What makes the Texas push distinct is not just political enthusiasm but the sheer variety of reactor designs and institutional backers now racing to put steel in the ground.
Dow Bets Big on Pebble-Bed Reactors in Calhoun County
The largest single project in the Texas advanced nuclear pipeline comes from an unlikely corner of the petrochemical industry. Long Mott Energy, a Dow subsidiary, submitted a construction permit application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for four Xe-100 reactor modules near Seadrift in Calhoun County, and the NRC has already docketed the filing, as documented in the agency’s project documents. Docketing clears the first procedural hurdle and initiates the detailed safety and environmental review that will determine whether the plant can move into construction. For Dow, the proposal represents a direct challenge to the assumption that heavy industrial manufacturers will remain tethered to natural gas for process heat and electricity, particularly along the Gulf Coast where gas has long been the default fuel.
The plant’s technical profile underscores how different this project is from legacy nuclear stations. According to the NRC’s overview of the Long Mott project, the generating station would use a high-temperature gas-cooled design fueled by TRISO particles, a ceramic-coated fuel form engineered to retain fission products even under extreme conditions. The four Xe-100 modules are expected to provide 800 MWth of thermal output and 320 MWe of electrical capacity, enough to support both Dow’s internal loads and potentially export power to the grid. Dow’s partnership with X-energy on this configuration, highlighted in an Associated Press report, signals that a major chemical producer now views advanced reactors as a credible pathway to decarbonize steam and power at a complex that has historically relied on fossil fuels. If the NRC review proceeds without major setbacks, the Calhoun County project could become the first real test of whether small modular reactors can anchor large industrial campuses at commercial scale.
State Lawmakers Put $350 Million Behind Advanced Nuclear
Texas is not simply watching these private-sector initiatives from the sidelines. Governor Greg Abbott has publicly praised the Legislature for approving House Bill 14, which commits $350 million to advanced nuclear projects and formally creates the Texas Advanced Nuclear Energy Office, as noted in the governor’s statement on the legislation. The new office is tasked with coordinating rulemaking, administering grants, and offering bonus incentives designed to pull more reactor proposals into the state’s pipeline. For a grid already straining under rapid load growth from data centers, petrochemical expansions, and population inflows, the scale of this funding marks a strategic bet that nuclear can complement Texas’s large fleets of gas plants and wind farms.
The statute itself lays out the architecture for how that bet will be implemented. The text of HB 14 grants rulemaking authority over advanced nuclear development, establishes competitive grant and bonus programs, and defines the operations of the new energy office in relation to other state agencies. While much commentary frames the law as a straightforward pro-nuclear signal, its real impact will hinge on whether these programs can shrink the soft costs (site studies, early engineering work, legal fees) that often stall projects before they ever reach the NRC. Federal licensing remains the binding constraint for every reactor proposed in Texas, and no state statute can alter the pace or rigor of federal safety reviews. What HB 14 can do, if implemented aggressively, is create a more predictable development environment that helps industrial hosts like Dow and university partners move from concept to application without exhausting their early-stage capital.
Microreactors and Molten Salt: The University Track
Alongside utility-scale ambitions, a separate wave of experimentation is emerging on Texas campuses. The Texas A&M University System has partnered with startup Last Energy to deploy a PWR-5 microreactor at the RELLIS campus, a project described in the system’s announcement of a microreactor pilot collaboration. Designed for 5 MW of capacity, the reactor is expected to follow a phased testing plan that begins with low-power operation and could eventually feed electricity into local infrastructure. Because the project is privately financed rather than grant-funded, it straddles the line between research reactor and commercial demonstration, giving regulators and engineers a chance to evaluate factory-built, small-scale units under real operating conditions.
The Texas A&M initiative is part of a broader push by microreactor firms to secure first-of-a-kind deployments, a trend that Bloomberg coverage has framed as a race to establish early beachheads on U.S. soil. In parallel, Abilene Christian University has secured an NRC construction permit for its Molten Salt Research Reactor in Abilene, a facility that will use circulating liquid fuel instead of solid pellets or pebbles. While the Texas A&M project focuses on a compact pressurized water design meant to be replicated for industrial clients, the Abilene reactor is structured as a research platform to probe the chemistry, materials, and safety characteristics of molten salt systems. Together, these efforts suggest that Texas is cultivating a diverse nuclear ecosystem that spans conventional water-cooled microreactors and more experimental liquid-fuel concepts, while also training the engineers, operators, and regulators who could eventually support commercial fleets like Dow’s proposed Xe-100 units.
Federal Pressure and the July 2026 Deadline
All of this activity is unfolding under a tightening federal timeline. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Reactor Pilot Program has set an ambitious goal of achieving initial criticality for at least three advanced reactor concepts outside the national laboratory system by July 2026, a target that is pushing developers to lock in sites, partners, and financing sooner rather than later. For companies like X-energy and Last Energy, and for institutions such as Texas A&M and Abilene Christian, that deadline functions as an informal finish line. Projects that can demonstrate credible progress toward operation by mid-decade are more likely to attract federal cost-sharing, private capital, and long-term offtake agreements. Those that lag risk being eclipsed by competitors in other states or by more conventional gas and renewables projects that can move faster through existing permitting structures.
In practice, the July 2026 objective is less a hard cutoff than a forcing mechanism that shapes how Texas stakeholders sequence their decisions. Dow’s Long Mott application, the early design and siting work at the RELLIS campus, and the molten salt research program in Abilene all feed into a national scoreboard that federal agencies and investors are watching closely. If even a subset of these efforts reaches construction or initial operation on an aggressive schedule, Texas could emerge as the primary domestic test bed for whether advanced reactors can be built on time and on budget. If they stumble, the state will still have created a regulatory office, a funding framework, and a cohort of trained specialists that can support a second wave of designs. Either way, the combination of state money, industrial demand, university experimentation, and federal pressure has turned Texas into a bellwether for the next chapter of American nuclear power.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
