Trump Ignites US Nuclear Comeback With Texas Plant

NewsMax ^ | Saturday, 05 April 2025 02:34 PM EDT | Jim Thomas

[central_va]

reduced carbon emissions

No one cares about that. It was a ludicrous "problem" anyway.

[Sacajaweau]

Very interesting...doesn’t require large body of water for cooling...

[central_va]

In before the “what about the wasted/spent fuel” posters.

[rlmorel]

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.

[rellic]

About time we escaped the Tyranny of “Karens” and “Cat ladies” and use our clean natural resources.

[Deaf Smith]

I would guess that these are the SMR’s reported at FR to being built in Haskell, Texas?

[bewildered]

Amen!

[kvanbrunt2]

I want a nuclear battery for my house.

[central_va]

I want a Popeil Pocket Nuclear reactor!!

[alloysteel]

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.

[WildHighlander57]

Haskell is north of Abilene, and Seadrift is between Corpus Christi and Houston on the coast.

[Ronaldus Magnus III]

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?

[READINABLUESTATE]

Brilliant!

What could go wrong? 🤷

[know.your.why]

OP left out the most important parts...

• X-energy's Seadrift reactor will use helium gas to cool billions of uranium-filled pebbles, generating temperatures near 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit to create steam for power.
  
  

• "What attracted them to X-energy was that our plant configuration is four modules that produce about 320 megawatts," said Carol Lane, X-energy's vice president of government affairs. "It gives very, very high reliability, which is something that the data centers and AI centers really care about."
  
  

• Big Tech companies are increasingly backing SMRs. In October, Google announced a deal with Kairos Power to deploy multiple SMRs starting in 2030.
  
  

• Amazon soon followed, investing $500 million in three SMR projects, including a 320-megawatt X-energy venture in Washington state with Energy Northwest. Amazon's agreement could bring 5 gigawatts of power online by 2039.
  
  Energy Secretary Chris Wright has pledged full support.
  
  "We will work diligently and creatively to enable the rapid deployment and export of next-generation nuclear technology," he said in February.
  
  Despite past setbacks — including the 2023 cancellation of NuScale Power's Idaho project, which faced cost overruns and a lack of buyers — enthusiasm remains strong. China leads the world in SMRs, and under Trump’s leadership, the United States aims to follow suit, according to the Times.

[lurk]

Given Texas’ population explosion and the state’s blinky power grid in recent years, this is a great idea.

[bantam]

I’ll second that!
“Reduced carbon emissions”. What a joke!

[asinclair]

In concert with the growth of uranium-based reactors, we need thorium reactors to burn up the waste from the former, as well as the piles and piles of nuclear wastes we already have.

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.

[Sequoyah101]

THIS is real progress and truly transformative. It could only be made better if it was fueled by Thorium.

[Sequoyah101]

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.