Posted on 04/05/2025 3:30:31 PM PDT by SoConPubbie
The Trump administration's drive to revive American manufacturing and power a growing artificial intelligence industry is accelerating with a new nuclear energy project in Texas, The Washington Times reported.
A manufacturing facility in Texas is preparing to switch from natural gas to nuclear power as the Trump administration pushes to expand the use of small modular reactors, or SMRs, to meet rising electricity demand and bolster the U.S. manufacturing base.
This week, Dow Chemical and nuclear engineering firm X-energy submitted a federal construction permit application for a next-generation SMR at Dow's 4,700-acre plant in Seadrift, Texas. The site produces plastics and chemical products used in dozens of applications and will be the first U.S. facility of its kind powered by a grid-scale advanced nuclear reactor.
"This project will demonstrate how the technology deployed at Seadrift, Texas, can be quickly and efficiently replicated to meet incredible power demand growth across America," said J. Clay Sell, CEO of X-energy.
The SMR project is one of several initiatives supported by President Donald Trump to reindustrialize the country and provide clean, reliable energy for artificial intelligence data centers. Within days of taking office for his second term, the president declared a national emergency to speed the construction of new energy plants, including SMRs, which he has described as a priority for energy security and technological leadership.
"These can be built ultrasafe. They are ultraclean, and they're very low-cost. But they are absolutely safe," Trump told supporters in York, Pennsylvania, last August.
Unlike traditional nuclear plants, SMRs are smaller, cheaper to build, and can be constructed in modules. Their design allows for high reliability, reduced carbon emissions, and easier siting since they do not require proximity to large bodies of water.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
No one cares about that. It was a ludicrous "problem" anyway.
Very interesting...doesn’t require large body of water for cooling...
In before the “what about the wasted/spent fuel” posters.
More. More. More.
We need to build more. We need to develop smaller, modular municipal nuclear plants. Drill for oil. Mine coal. All of it.
About time we escaped the Tyranny of “Karens” and “Cat ladies” and use our clean natural resources.
I would guess that these are the SMR’s reported at FR to being built in Haskell, Texas?
Amen!
I want a nuclear battery for my house.
If we had a thousand of these Small Modular Nuclear Reactors up and running, the cost to produce a kilowatt of electricity would be so low it would become economically feasible to use the electricity generated to make electrolysis to produce hydrogen, bottle it up, and use the hydrogen economy to drive our motor transportation of people and goods to every corner of the country in an explosion of opportunity unparalleled in the history of the word. The watchwords are cheap, safe and reliable.
Haskell is north of Abilene, and Seadrift is between Corpus Christi and Houston on the coast.
Wouldn’t it be grand if President Trump were to announce a sustainable, organic warp speed program to jump start the Plant Food Industry. Wherever mother nature has stored the Plant Food, we will stimulate huuuuge plant growth, not just in the United States, but in support of 3rd world countries trying to advance. AND, because the Carbon Cycle is organic and sustainable, it is a win-win all around.
Could critics be labeled Plant Deniers, anti organic?
Brilliant!
What could go wrong? 🤷
Given Texas’ population explosion and the state’s blinky power grid in recent years, this is a great idea.
I’ll second that!
“Reduced carbon emissions”. What a joke!
How about this: a small thorium reactor built with railroad trucks, so that the thing can travel around the country to burn up nuclear waste. Instead of transporting the waste to the nuclear incinerator, we bring the sucker to the waste.
Such a plan would get around one of the big issues blocking the Yucca repository.
THIS is real progress and truly transformative. It could only be made better if it was fueled by Thorium.
Natural gas is far too valuable as a feed stock for chemicals to burn it. Dow doing this does not surprise me. Their chemical engineers cringe to think of burning natural gas to heat water or anything else.
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