With artic air blanketing much of the state all eyes are paying attention to our power grid. Texas’ grid has had enough power to handle demand during this cold snap, but concerns remain about the future.
The Year 2050
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“We’re facing today, now, a marketplace that’s going to perhaps in Texas over the next 10 to 15 years double the amount of required electricity at peak. We’re going from today about 85 gigawatts in the hot summer days to as much as 140 150 gigawatts,” said Charles McConnell, former asst. secretary for the US Dept. of Energy and Executive Dir. for the Center for Carbon Management in Energy at the University of Houston. “It’s almost a doubling of where we are today.”
McConnell said population growth and technology, like artificial intelligence and crypto-mining centers, are driving Texas' rapidly rising energy needs. In November the Public Utility Commission of Texas recommended “Texas must deploy a coordinated nuclear power strategy to enhance energy security and grid reliability.”
The recommendation came from a PUCT study done at the behest of Gov. Greg Abbott. The PUCT’s report noted a study showing Texas’s energy needs “could see almost 100% increases in demand by 2050.”
The PUCT’s Advanced Nuclear Reactor Working Group stated Texas has 61 sites where Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) could be placed to help increase power on our grid.
“It’s no secret we have places in our grid today where we have shortfalls and we’re having a lot of conversation about transmission lines that are going to go from here to there for billions of dollars,” said McConnell. “Wouldn’t it be great if some of that could be strategically determined, by placement of these small modular reactors, in places in the grid where the demands are, so we don’t have to have conversation after conversation about how we going to run the wires from here to there.”
Currently Texas’ power grid gets 10-percent of its energy from nuclear reactors at the South Texas Project in Matagorda County and the Comanche Peak Plant near Ft. Worth in Somervell county.
However, the SMRs discussed by the PUC are far smaller in size than conventional nuclear plants and cost far less.
“I think the nuclear industry had its day decades ago with huge facilities that have now become, in some ways, almost a boat anchor for investment for utility companies,” said McConnell.
McConnell foresees smaller reactors eventually being used to power specific operations “behind the meter.” In other words, McConnell said, a small reactor could be used to help power a specific portion of a facility, like a data center, without relying completely on energy from the grid.
“We want to be that guinea pig.”
The Center for Advanced Small Modular and Microreactors at Texas A&M has partnered with several energy companies developing SMR designs. The Center is helping study and test the various designs. The facility also has a mock SMR control room, where students practice operating the facility and deal with emergencies like earthquakes.
“Nuclear is a pathway to provide low level, stable energy that’s proven for decades,” said David Staack, Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research. “I think what people can expect to see is in the next five years is construction started on new facilities."
Staack said A&M is also inviting energy companies to build and operate prototype SMRs on its Rellis Technology and Innovation campus.
“(We want to) be an early adopter, facilitate this next generation of nuclear power,” said Staack. “What we’re looking to do is to site multiple different technologies of small modular reactors on our Rellis campus,” said Staack.
Staack also said SMRs are being with designed with a concept called “walkway safe.” He said technology being developed would avoid “meltdown situations,” arising from power outages, water outages or natural disasters.
“What that means is I can walk away from the reactor, ignore it, and it will be safe,” said Staack.
Not so certain
Rice University professor Daniel Cohan is not so optimistic about nuclear energy helping our grid anytime soon. Cohan has spent years studying the grid.
“Over time we’ve often heard projects get announced and the dates get pushed back, many of them not be built. And so, it’s really a wait and see matter of how many of these that will come online in the next decade,” said Cohan.
Cohan’s concern is Texas' energy needs are growing faster than the time it takes to get a reactor approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, built and plugged into our grid.
“Because our power needs are growing so fast and the only power sources available to supply that anytime soon are solar, wind, batteries and natural gas; those are the four key building blocks to our power grid. And that’s going to stay that way, at least for the next decade. Any additions we get from nuclear are likely to be very small compared to any additions we get from those other sources,” said Cohan.
Cohan also wonders how economically feasible building SMRs in Texas will be for energy companies.
“Nuclear costs so much upfront that you really only want to build it if you can run it almost all the time. On the Texas power grid today, we have times where prices are near zero because there’s either so much solar or so much wind that prices would be too low for a nuclear power plant to be worth operating,” said Cohan. “And so, these baseload fixed plants that aren’t as flexible are going to have a really hard time in the Texas market,” said Cohan.
What’s in the works?
According to the PUCT, X-Energy has partnered with DOW chemical to build and operate an SMR at Dow’s petrochemical facility in Seadrift, which is 2 and-a-half hours southwest of Houston. X-Energy’s website states it has, “initiated extensive environmental, geological, and geotechnical work to advance progress toward submitting a Construction Permit Application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for review and approval.”
X-Energy’s website shows it hopes to begin construction 2026. Meanwhile, the US Department of Energy reported the Nuclear Regulatory Commission certified the first SMR design in 2023. The design is from NuScale Power.
