New Nuclear in Texas, with Doug Robison and Dr. Rusty Towell

Texas has long been an energy powerhouse, but the grid is facing unprecedented challenges. Between surging demand from industrial electrification, hotter summers, and data centers and the retirement of aging power plants, we need more advanced firm power sources and we need them fast.

In this episode of the Energy Capital Podcast, I sat down with Doug Robison, the founder and president of Natura Resources and former oil and gas executive, and Rusty Towell, founding director for Abilene Christian University's premiere research project called the NEXT (Nuclear Energy eXperimental Testing) Lab. Natura, in partnership with ACU, is pioneering molten salt reactors, a next-generation nuclear technology that promises higher efficiency, greater safety, and the ability to scale quickly.

Unlike traditional nuclear plants, which operate at high pressure and require massive containment structures, molten salt reactors run at low pressure, eliminating many of the risks and cost barriers that have made nuclear difficult to scale in the past. As Doug puts it, “Remove pressure, and everything changes.”

That’s exactly what Natura is doing in Abilene, where their first 1 MW test reactor is set to go online by 2026-2027 — only the second advanced research reactor ever licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). This small-scale demonstration is designed to prove the technology and pave the way for full-scale commercial deployment around 2030.

But nuclear isn’t just about electricity, it’s about heat. These reactors operate at twice the temperature of conventional nuclear plants, making them ideal for industrial applications. Texas is a perfect fit for this technology, not just because of its growing energy demand, but because it has the infrastructure, workforce, and industrial needs to scale it rapidly.

One of the biggest takeaways from our conversation was how capital, not regulation, has become the biggest bottleneck. The NRC has already issued Natura a construction permit, and the policy landscape is shifting, with bipartisan support at both the federal and state levels for advanced nuclear. However, deploying reactors at scale requires massive investment and as Doug Robison points out, that shift is only just beginning.

With demand projections skyrocketing, from AI data centers to large-scale industrial growth to cooling load in increasingly hotter summers, Texas will need every tool available to ensure affordable, reliable, and clean energy. The question isn’t whether nuclear will play a role, it’s how fast we can get there.

This is one of the most exciting energy conversations I’ve had, and it’s a must-listen for anyone who wants to understand how nuclear could reshape Texas’ energy landscape.

As always, please like, share, and leave a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts. Your support helps bring these critical energy conversations to more people.

Timestamps

* 00:00 - Introduction

* 02:30 - Natura’s technology, what’s different about a molten salt reactor from the typical high pressure reactors

* 08:00 - Timeline to deployments, milestones met so far

* 13:00 - Use cases and modularity, size of deployments

* 18:30 - Policy in nuclear development & comparative advantages of Texas

* 25:00 - Learning curves and cost reductions for nuclear

* 31:00 - Exploring molten salt reactor technology with flexibility & scalability

* 36:00 - Nuclear’s role in the future of energy demand in Texas

* 38:30 - Policy support for nuclear energy

* 43:00 - The role of utilities in nuclear energy, and the differences in competitive markets

* 47:30 - The Role of subsidies for nuclear energy

* 50:00 - The need for incentives and support from DOE’s Loan Program Office

* 54:30 - Abilene: A new energy hub

* 56:00 - Natura’s mission to improve quality of life, increase energy abundance

* 58:30 - Transferability of skills from oil & gas to nuclear, why Landman gives the wrong impression

* 1:00:00 - NEXT Lab and the first advanced reactor at a university, it’s in Abilene and it’s really happening. see below:

Shownotes

Speakers, Key Projects, and Developments:

* Doug Robison - LinkedIn,

* Rusty Towell - Linkedin, ACU Website, NRC Website,

* Natura Resources Official Website: Explore more about their projects and technological advancements.

* Molten Salt Research Reactor (MSR-1) at Abilene Christian University (ACU): The first liquid salt-fueled reactor licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), marking a significant milestone in advanced nuclear research.

* Natura Resources' Initiatives: There are two new initiatives, a MSR-100 energy production reactor on the RELLIS Campus at Texas A&M University and an MSR reactor for energy and desalination on the Texas Tech campus.

* Texas A&M University Part of Groundbreaking Molten Salt Reactor Project

* Texas Tech Partners with Natura, ACU to Advance Cutting-Edge Technology

* Updated pathway to Advanced Nuclear Commercial Liftoff. US DOE Loan Programs Office.

* Nuclear? Perhaps! David Roberts’ Volts Podcast.

Licensing, Regulatory Framework, and Legislative Updates:

* NRC Advanced Reactor Licensing: The NRC has issued new guidance to facilitate the licensing process for non-light water reactor designs, aiming to reduce regulatory uncertainty for advanced reactor concepts.

* DOE's Support for Advanced Reactor Licensing: Initiatives to offset licensing costs and support the deployment of advanced reactors.

* Proposed Rule for Advanced Reactors: The NRC plans to establish a risk-informed, performance-based, and technology-inclusive licensing process for advanced reactors, aiming for a more flexible regulatory framework. ​

* House Bill 14 (HB 14): Establishes funding mechanisms within the Office of the Governor and the Texas Public Utility Commission to support the deployment of advanced nuclear reactors in Texas.

* Senate Bill 1105 (SB 1105): Proposes the establishment of the Texas Advanced Nuclear Energy Authority and the appointment of a Texas nuclear permitting officer to streamline nuclear energy projects.

* House Bill 2678 (HB 2678): Identical to SB 1105, this bill also aims to establish the Texas Advanced Nuclear Energy Authority and a nuclear permitting officer

Recent News:

* Companies are coming to Texas to develop a new generation of nuclear reactors. Texas Tribune.

* CERAweek: Small nuclear power struggles at cusp of US electricity demand boom. Reuters.

* Tech Industry Engagement: Companies like Google and Amazon are investing in SMRs, signaling a potential shift in energy infrastructure to support data centers and other high-demand sectors. ​

* Google and Amazon make major inroads with SMRs to bring nuclear energy to data centers

* Three Mile Island nuclear plant to reopen, sell power to Microsoft

Transcript

Doug Lewin (00:00.0)

Welcome to the Energy Capital Podcast. I'm your host, Doug Lewin. For decades, nuclear energy has been stuck in place with escalating costs and only two units added in the last 20 years. New nuclear technology, though, can be modular, smaller when you need it to be, bigger when you need it to be, and inherently safer too. In fact, a new kind of nuclear reactor is being developed right now in Texas that could revolutionize industrial power, reduce waste, and even use spent nuclear fuel as an energy source.

Doug Lewin (00:30.722)

The Advanced Nuclear Reactor Working Group convened by the governor and chaired by Commissioner Glotfelty recommended building up a small nuclear industry right here in Texas. At the center of that hope for Texas is Natura Resources, developing a liquid fueled molten salt reactor. Today on the Energy Capital Podcast, I'm joined by Dr. Rusty Towell and Doug Robinson to talk about the next generation of nuclear power and more specifically, molten salt reactors.

Doug Lewin (00:57.39)

Rusty and Doug have teamed up to develop a test reactor out of all places, Abilene Christian University. Rusty is a professor in the Department of Engineering and Physics at ACU. And Robinson is a longtime oil executive who loves to talk about how the oil and gas industry skill sets apply to nuclear. It's a fascinating topic and shows how energy transition and expansion overlap.

Doug Lewin (01:20.056)

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a construction permit for the deployment of Natura Resources Molten Salt Reactor System at Abilene Christian. This is the first construction permit for a liquid-fueled advanced reactor and only the second for any advanced reactor ever issued by the NRC. In this episode, we talk about why Texas could become the hub for advanced nuclear innovation, the policy and regulatory hurdles that still need to be solved, and how private industry, along with government, can lead the nuclear renaissance.

Doug Lewin (01:49.634)

The day we recorded was the day that House Bill 14, the legislature's effort to put $2 billion toward advanced nuclear deployment in Texas was filed. It has since had a hearing. I'm excited about this one because nuclear isn't just making a comeback. It's evolving into something entirely new. And it's one of the biggest stories in energy today and will be for the next decade and beyond. Stick around because by the end of this episode, you'll have a clear picture of where nuclear is headed and why Texas, that plays its cards right, could be at the center of it all.

Doug Lewin (02:19.028)

As always, please give us a five star rating. It really does help people find the podcast. And leave me some comments if you like the episode. I need to know which episodes you like and what you want more of. So please do give us that rating and give us your comments. Hope you enjoy this episode. Thank you for listening.

Doug Lewin (02:39.586)

Rusty Towell and Doug Robinson, welcome to the Energy Capital Podcast.

Rusty Towell (02:43.406)

Thank you for having us.

Doug Robison (02:44.462)

Appreciate it, Doug.

Doug Lewin (02:45.612)

Hey, thanks so much for being on. I'm really excited about Natura and what's going on and Abilene. So much to talk about, so much excitement around what you guys are doing. Can we just start though with like, what is the technology? Explain it to me like I'm a smart fifth grader. I think my intelligence is probably below a smart fifth grader, but I'll, but I'll reach. Go ahead and explain it to me like I'm a smart fifth grader. The technology and how what you're doing is different than the sort of what people think of as the traditional, you know, large nuclear power plant.

Rusty Towell (03:15.426)

Yeah. So I like to think of it as we take everything that's really good and wonderful about nuclear energy and things that people have concern on, let's improve them. Let's make them better. And it turns out that there hasn't been a lot of innovation in commercial nuclear power for the last 50, 60 years. And so it's pretty easy to do that. There's ideas, there are old ideas that we can actually start implementing and make things better. the two big changes that we're making or the reactor that we're talking about here, which is a

Rusty Towell (03:45.324)

liquid-fueled molten salt cooled reactor, those are the two technology choices. Let's change the heat transfer fluid. So instead of moving the thermal energy for where it's made in the reactor core to a steam generator where it makes steam to turn a turbine, make electricity with water, let's use a different fluid. And so we step back and we say, well, what's, what are the properties of that fluid we really want? We would like something that can operate at really high temperatures because we're more efficient there and we're able to provide industrial processes.

Rusty Towell (04:14.84)

that high temperature heat that they need. And so we want high temperature, but wouldn't it be great if we operated at low pressure because at high pressure, that's a real danger and also a real expense to engineer strong systems that can withstand that. So we want a high temperature, low pressure fluid. And it turns out when you look at that, and we also would like the fluid to not be chemically reactive or, you know, have any sort of

Rusty Towell (04:42.562)

break apart at high temperature or et cetera, et cetera. So a salt in liquid form is a perfect fluid. So that's what we're going to use. Take salt, melt it, use that as your coolant. The number two thing, let's put the fuel inside that salt, dissolve it inside of it instead of having solid fuel elements. So instead of having a solid fuel rod with a metal cladding around it where we use some of the fuel and then the fuel element becomes unstable and is no longer suitable for use in a reactor and we throw it away,

Rusty Towell (05:11.374)

and throw away lot of the energy content and throw away a lot of useful isotopes and we add a lot of material to the waste stream. Let's just dissolve the fuel in the salt, much like dissolving sugar in your coffee. And so the fuel can be added to the core, but also can be drained out of the core to shut it down. And so it makes it safer, more efficient, et cetera.

Doug Lewin (05:32.318)

So less waste, safer because you don't really have the danger and tell me if I'm wrong about this. This is I'll put in the form of a question. Do you not have the danger then of some kind of a runaway reaction because the fuel is actually getting dissolved into the molten salt? Is that correct?

Rusty Towell (05:48.408)

So you design it so that it doesn't run away by using low enriched uranium, not high enriched uranium by making sure you have a configuration where it's impossible for it to run away. You have a system that we call walk away safe because you literally can drain the fuel out of the core. So you can guarantee you shut things down. No normal reactors you shut down by inserting the control rod. And so if you can't, if something breaks and you can't get the control rod inserted, well then how do you do it?

Rusty Towell (06:17.238)

And so the commercial systems, say, well, we have to have a backup method in case something breaks. We have a system where we drain the fuel out. And so we literally have a system that's walk away safe because if the reactor operator walks away, if power is lost, if the computer shut down, if, if, if, if as long as gravity works, it can shut itself down.

Doug Lewin (06:39.246)

Okay, I'm going to go to Doug in a minute to add anything to this, but then also you have less water use, higher heat, right?

Rusty Towell (06:46.168)

Yeah, I mean you can make systems where you don't need any sort of water in the coolant or you can depending on how you want to convert that thermal energy into electricity. You could have a variety of systems there where it could be used on that end of things. But certainly in the power production, you don't use any water.

Doug Lewin (07:01.036)

Doug, I'm going to go to you next. You can add anything to that answer, but I would also love for you to talk about sort of where you're at in the process right now. I believe there was a construction permit issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is obviously no small thing, a major thing. Add anything to Dr. Tal's answer that you want to, but also just kind of talk to us about timeline. where are you in the timeline and how long before we actually have one of these advanced reactors running in state of Texas?

Doug Robison (07:29.144)

The only thing would add to what Dr. Tao had to say on the system is that just to reiterate the importance of a low pressure or zero pressure system, changes from a safety standpoint, that changes everything. And so the large, extremely large forgings that you require, we do not require that. The containment dome that you see on light water reactors, we don't require that because we don't have pressure. You remove pressure and everything changes. And so that one fact,

Doug Robison (07:57.962)

and not even begin to talk about waste. You know, we don't generate the waste that you see with current light water reactors. In fact, we can re-utilize that spent nuclear fuel as fuel for molten salt reactors. So we don't have to throw that fuel away. We can keep it and use it. But the low pressure aspect, the walk away safe aspect is directly beats into your second question on what is the timeline. So the timeline for the demonstration reactor, the reactor at ACU is for

Doug Robison (08:26.03)

For licensing purposes and for the purposes of the universities, it is a research reactor. It is the country's first advanced research reactor in the history of the nation. Very valuable for that. For Natura's purposes, it is also a demonstration reactor. It demonstrates licensure, so we have already demonstrated with the NRC that we can get a license. We got our license in September of last year. It's the first time the NRC has ever licensed a liquid-fueled reactor in the nation. So a huge accomplishment.

Doug Robison (08:54.892)

made by the researchers at the four universities on that. That demonstration or research reactor is scheduled to become critical or go online the end of 2026, early 2027. So very likely we'll be the first advanced reactor to be operating in the United States, I guess since the 1960s, Rusty, if we go back to the Oak Ridge days, but under the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's period of existence. Natura, one of our goals is how do we get the

Doug Robison (09:23.512)

production as quickly as possible. Production is deploying commercial reactors. So last year I started saying that we have a defensible pathway to deploy commercial reactors before 2030. Since that time, a lot has happened. The pace of change in this area is incredible. My certainty of deployment before 2030 is going up. And I believe at that time that is getting closer and in one large

Doug Robison (09:50.324)

aspect of that is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that is often criticized for the stringent bar that they set to deploy reactors. Natura, we actually lean into that and say that that is a good thing. We are deploying nuclear reactors. We're not building stepladders. And stepladders require federal approval also, by the way. And so a very, very high safety standard should be the norm. If you can't reach that safety standard, then maybe you shouldn't be building a nuclear reactor.

Doug Robison (10:18.766)

So we think that is a strength of the NRC to be leaned into. And what the NRC is doing, there were hearings over the last two days as a matter of fact, and we've had three of the five commissioners come through Abilene and tour the facilities there, the Science Engineering Research Center. The NRC is leaning in into what does advanced nuclear provide in terms of new licensing regimens. There has been discussion recently about microreactors and those are very small reactors.

Doug Robison (10:48.534)

Are they somehow different than the large lab water reactors from a licensing and safety standpoint? All of the arguments that are being made for micro reactors can be made really in all caps for molten salt reactors because of the walk away safety aspect, because we don't deal with pressure. And so we were having in the tourists, having a series of conversations with potential industrial partners. had one just as this very afternoon, about an hour before this podcast.

Doug Robison (11:18.376)

with a very large industrial entity. And the conversation was we're presenting to the NRC technology that could open up new licensing pathways that are going to require the years and years that we've seen on light water reactors. I can't sit here today and say we're going to license a reactor, commercial reactor in the next four years. What I can say is that industry, Natura is leaning in.

Doug Robison (11:47.33)

The state of Texas is leaning in and saying, we need you to move faster if the NRC is leaning in. So if everybody's leaning in, then you feel like you're going to be finding a faster way to do things without compromising on the safety. I've got to emphasize that over and over. We're not seeking compromise on safety. What we're doing is because we have a passively safe system that never goes to pressure that the, the, the fuel goes because it's in the salt as Dr. Tao explained.

Doug Robison (12:17.112)

we go from a solid to a liquid to a solid, the ability to contain that is much different than it was for high pressure light water reactors. And so we still have a defensible pathway to deployment of commercial reactors before 2030. Again, I think that timeline could be getting shorter. And then the number of your reactors you deploy at that point is just simply a bunch of the capital. You're going to deploy one every...

Doug Robison (12:42.978)

Two years, are you going to play 20 in the first 24 months? That's just a function of capital and the long pole of the tent. I actually before a few weeks ago, before some of the meetings we've had in New York and Salt Lake city and some of the testimony going on at the NRC, I might've said the long pole in the tent, the long timeline continues to be the licensing timeline. I now think that the long pole in the tent is actually the capital. When is the capital available?

Doug Lewin (13:09.24)

So let's talk a little bit about how the use cases for this and the size of this. So you're doing a one megawatt test reactor, large nuclear plants, at least the four we have in Texas are all about 1200 megawatts. We have lot of obviously lot of listeners that are energy professionals, but we try to make this as accessible to a general audience as possible too.

Doug Lewin (13:33.144)

So to put that in perspective, know, a small city like Waco or Lubbock might be not small city, mid-sized city, sorry, Waco and Lubbock, you know, seven or 800 megawatts, a city like Austin, about 3000 megawatts, San Antonio, about five or 6,000 megawatts. These are smaller by design, right? So that they could be used at an industrial site or at a campus. Is it one size or is there kind of a range of size that Natura's reactors could be?

Doug Robison (13:59.49)

The reactor at Abilene Christian is a one megawatt thermal that is a limit set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a liquid fuel research reactor. The Natura commercial reactor we're staying within, definition of a small modular reactor, one of those definitions being you can fit everything on the back of a semi. So that becomes our limitation is the reactor core can be no larger than what you can transport on the back of a semi trailer.

Doug Robison (14:26.446)

Dr. Tao, you'll know the measurements better than I, but the reactor vessel, not just the core, but the vessel itself is, I don't know, 14 feet wide or something like this.

Rusty Towell (14:36.974)

The reactor we're deploying here at ACU, it's about 10 feet diameter and 20 feet high cylinder is sort of everything that has fuel inside of it all lives inside of that one system.

Doug Robison (14:42.072)

Thank you the...

Doug Robison (14:47.022)

Yeah. So the commercial system, it's going to be 250 times more powerful is 14 feet wide and then maybe 35 to 40 feet tall. So if when you go up in power by 250 times, you don't go up in size by 250 times. And so while we end up within that limitation of size, within the limitation of the fuel that we're using, because we're for our commercial reactors, we're using LEU plus because of the shortage of HALU. So we're not planning on having HALU available when it's not commercially available.

Doug Robison (15:16.942)

is a 100 megawatt electric, 250 megawatt thermal.

Doug Lewin (15:21.26)

What you hold on, hold on, hold on one second. Okay. So 100 megawatt electric, 250 megawatt thermal. So for a lot of industrial applications, what you're doing is you're using like steam and waste heat. Is that what you're talking about here? Okay. Okay. And so 100 megawatt electric and then another 250 that can be used on site for that industrial process or for commercial use, whatever.

Doug Robison (15:38.166)

Exactly right. Yes.

Doug Robison (15:48.43)

Right? That's right. We have two commercial projects that have been announced. One is a primary heat project. It's desalinating produced water in the Permian basin. And so because the salinity of produced water is triple that of seawater, membrane technology really doesn't function at that. So they're looking at thermal energy. So that's where we would bring the high process heat. We have a second deployment that's been announced on the RELLIS campus at Texas A University that's providing power.

Doug Robison (16:17.698)

providing electricity. And so we actually, coincidentally, but fortunately, have two commercial projects that have been announced, and one focusing on the heat aspect that molten-salt reactors uniquely operated, very, very high temperatures, but again, very, very low pressures. We can take advantage of that high process heat, and then we have another on the RELLIS campus that's just a pure power reactor.

Doug Lewin (16:39.618)

But for the one at RELLIS, so that would be electric, but somebody's going to presumably use the thermal output as well, right? Because the thermal output is there by design, right?

Doug Robison (16:49.228)

Well, as with any reactor, you turn heat into electricity. You end up in a power block where you take that heat, ultimately transfer it to water that creates steam away. Now this is not near the reactor core, so we're not introducing water into the reactor core through a heat transfer through a non-fuel salt. And then that water you do use to create steam and turn a turbine and make electricity. So yeah, any reactor is going to generate heat that you turn into steam.

Doug Lewin (17:04.781)

Got it.

Doug Robison (17:17.846)

We just happen to generate heat at more than twice the temperature of a current light water reactor. So we operate up above 600 degrees Celsius. But again, we never leave the liquid state.

Doug Lewin (17:28.652)

Okay, great. Doctor, tell me anything you want to add to that.

Rusty Towell (17:32.098)

No, well, I just say that, you know, any sort of power plant, virtually starts with a heat source, right? Whether you're burning coal, natural gas, concentrated solar, et cetera, it's a heat source. And then converting that thermal energy into electricity is something that we've been doing for a long time and we're efficient at, but there's also laws of physics that say limits how efficient you are and at lower temperatures, you're not as efficient. so current nuclear power plants and current reactors that are water cooled.

Rusty Towell (18:01.43)

or where water is your heat transfer fluid, you throw away more of your energy into waste heat and produce less electricity. We'll produce almost 50 % more electricity from the same amount of thermal energy by being able to operate at high temperatures. So that's just a benefit of operating at high temperature. You actually throw away less energy and actually can use more in form of electricity.

Doug Lewin (18:22.894)

Okay, great. So I do want to talk some about policy. Obviously, this is Energy Capital Podcast. We always talk about policy. We are recording on March 6th, which is the day that House Bill 14 has been filed. And I was looking through it a little while ago and was struck by how they actually called out something that Governor Abbott's Advanced Nuclear Reactor Working Group called out as well, high wage manufacturing jobs being part of this. Can you speak a little bit to the economic development aspects of this?

Doug Lewin (18:51.148)

You know, there's obviously a global market for energy. There's competitiveness around the world. It seems to me like, and I want to make sure I'm viewing this the right way, but there's a, there's a competitiveness angle here too. Like nobody else is developing exactly what you're developing anywhere else in the world. Is that right?

Doug Robison (19:06.99)

Anywhere else in the world, rusty, I think China is pursuing this technology. When the department of energy asked us to take this project on in 2019, the reason was given that we need to beat China and we need to beat Russia. So I wouldn't say anywhere else in the world. Now we'll say anywhere else in the United States, certainly.

Rusty Towell (19:26.414)

Rumor coming out China, they have a reactor, they got it operational full power last year. Very, very limited information coming, but certainly this is a technology that's interested worldwide and there's people that are working on China. In the West, there's a variety of people that are interested in it, but if you step back and say, are you interested or do you actually have a construction permit to do this? That's a very, very different question. And so if you say, do you have permission to actually build a reactor? All of a sudden there's a very, very small field of

Doug Robison (19:54.158)

Doug Robison (19:55.138)

So I was appointed by the advanced nuclear working group by governor Abbott and served in a leadership role in that. We submitted our recommendations to the governor's office in November of last year. And then what the governor's office rolled out, I believe in December, late November, the 13 recommendations that came out of the working group were comprised down into seven points that the governor issued. And then we have this house bill 14.

Doug Lewin (19:55.544)

Got it.

Doug Robison (20:22.894)

that is encompassing some of that. And we're going to see how that works to the legislative process. The two directives that Governor Abbott gave us in August of 2023 was one, we need more dispatchable power to reinforce the grid. And that was the overriding priority. Texas has a grid challenge.

Doug Robison (20:45.418)

as well as the water challenge. I don't know if you want to talk about water later, for sure. But those two infrastructure issues are before the legislature. We saw Texas put $5 billion in the Texas Energy Fund last session, trying to address dispatchable power, primarily through natural gas. We may see another $5 billion this session for another add-on to the Texas Energy Fund. We have $2.5 billion.

Doug Robison (21:08.77)

Currently in the House and the Senate, both addressing water, which one of the key components is the ability to desal water is where you're to get the power. So we kind of reintroduce our technology at that point. And then we have this House Bill 14. I haven't had a chance to read through it. Just got it this afternoon. And I know it lays out many of the things about what the governor or what the work group came up with. I don't know if it has a dollar amount in there. I don't know if that has been given to us yet. How much the governor's office.

Doug Robison (21:38.056)

Our chairman Harris, who's sponsoring that bill, is recommending to put into nuclear what the competitive edge. There's 20 other states that are kind of saying the same thing. is saying we want to be the center of advanced nuclear. The Texas miracle is built upon the fact that we have the Permian basin and we have the Barnett shell. We are fortunate enough on the Barnett that's natural gas. The Permian basin is crude oil. We're blessed to have that rock.

Doug Robison (22:06.958)

in those formations in the state of Texas. That's why we're able to provide all of that power, all of the economic growth, again, the foundation of the Texas miracle. Advanced nuclear is not based upon formations. It's based upon whichever state becomes the center for manufacturing. So the second point of the governor's letter in August of 2023 was capture this industry for Texas. Texas has a manufacturing history. We're comfortable with energy.

Doug Robison (22:34.39)

In the four plus years that this project has been ongoing in Abilene, Abilene Christian and Natura have sponsored more tours and town halls that we can remember. We've not had one single voice of dissent or concern. It's been nothing but unmitigated support and excitement about what this could mean. I think Texas A is experiencing the same thing on their RELLIS campus initiative there. We have the manufacturing capability. Again, because we're not high pressure, we don't have to go overseas for forgings.

Doug Robison (23:03.872)

heavy forgings, we can manufacture back the facilities we're using at Abilene Krish and the test facilities were manufactured outside of Abilene. And you go to, you go into Houston and of course we can build these things. Texas has all of the components. We have the need, we have the history, and we have the blessings of a huge surplus that allows the state to step into this much more than say a Tennessee who Tennessee has some natural advantages. have Oak Ridge National Lab.

Doug Robison (23:33.678)

Yeah. And they've got the Tennessee Valley authorities. So they kind of got two runners on base already, but Texas from what the governor has said, what he said in the state of the state address about leading the nuclear Renaissance, what the legislature, what the state leadership have said in the interim, we'll see what plays out in this session under house bill four and other different appropriations that are working through the state that are directed toward advanced nuclear. So time will tell.

Doug Lewin (23:34.088)

Right, right.

Doug Robison (24:03.266)

But we know what the governor asked us to do. We know what the opportunities and possibilities are. Now we'll see how the legislature chooses to address it.

Doug Lewin (24:10.988)

Yeah. And I think there's so much, I think you're right, Texas has a lot of natural advantages here. And I think with tapping in at Abilene, there's the kind of potential there for that, you know, even first mover advantage. And, you mentioned Oak Ridge, you know, I interviewed Governor Perry for this podcast and he talked about how he was going to, he said on the podcast, he was going to talk to Secretary Wright. At that point, he hadn't been confirmed yet, but of course it's been confirmed since that Texas needs a national lab.

Doug Lewin (24:38.51)

I'm just gonna put that out there. I'm gonna keep saying it on this podcast. I'm gonna try to drop it into every episode. I mean, there's something like 20 years, like why do we not have a national lab for energy in Texas? It's kind of wild, right?

Doug Robison (24:50.466)

I think we had the chance with the super collider maybe and we blew that.

Doug Lewin (24:54.454)

Right,

Doug Lewin (24:54.935)

right, right. That's a topic for another day, We'll let you know. If this were one of those like three hour podcasts, we could get into that. Rusty, I want to ask you, it seems to me like with nuclear, the thing that has kind of always been missing is a learning curve, right? That like, you you've seen huge reductions in the cost of solar, in the cost of batteries, in the cost of LED light bulbs. could, heat pumps, I could go on.

Doug Lewin (25:20.934)

But we really haven't seen it in nuclear. Do you think there's the potential there that we could actually see? Because obviously cost is going to be potentially a limiting factor for nuclear. Can we get to where we get some kind of a steep learning curve on nuclear?

Rusty Towell (25:33.934)

Oh, absolutely. We certainly can do that. And I'll just go back to where I started. The fact that we're working at low pressure means we don't need that huge, thick reactor vessel and the huge containment dome and those huge forgings that Doug was talking about. And so we have a great starting point. And then let's bring in this concept of small modular reactors that Doug was talking about. Let's build our components not on site where we have to move a workforce.

Rusty Towell (26:02.84)

from side to side every time. we see this, right? I I love the fact that Vogel was completed and we got a new pressurized water reactor on the grid producing clean, safe, reliable energy. But it took 15 years and something like a workforce of over 9,000 people to build that thing. And so it was way over budget and behind schedule. Ford, 100 plus years ago, right? I mean, let's build in a factory.

Rusty Towell (26:30.264)

where you get a trained worker to build one part really high quality, you know, knows what he's doing and let's get the efficiencies of mass producing. And so we mass produce the modules in a factory and we get a single design that we licensed once and then we build a bunch of, and then all we have to do is, it okay to put it in this side? Yes. Let's build a, you know, a building like the building I'm standing in that was built, you know, in a year and a half.

Rusty Towell (26:59.15)

you know, with no special dome over the top of it. And all of sudden we have a place where we can deploy a small modular reactor. And so this allows us by all means to get down to that economies of scale so that we can truly make the one budget and on schedule where it's a sustainable form of energy from a market analysis point of view.

Doug Robison (27:12.877)

Nuclear.

Doug Lewin (27:20.802)

Yup. Doug, anything you want to add to that? We're do- Yup.

Doug Robison (27:23.022)

Doug Robison (27:23.562)

The demonstration reactor, when we met with the DOE in January of 2019, and they said, you need to build this reactor. And that led to the end of my retirement with that sentence. We laid out the pathway of utilizing, which had never been done before. And there's so much that we, we use that phrase so often, I think people quit believing us at some point. But one of the things we've never done before is we've never had a private company like Natura, fund a research reactor at the university. So that was a burst.

Doug Robison (27:52.418)

But the reason for that was that we were utilizing the research reactor program as a way to bring new technology to the marketplace. That had never been done before. Now the DOE's response was, that's a genius. This may be the future of research. We're seeing other universities now kind of holding their hands up and saying, Hey, we want to do the same thing. And we'll see if some of them are successful. Hopefully they are. But then in fact, the conversations we're having about how fast can we move is

Doug Robison (28:19.542)

We're not having to forecast or predict what it takes to do front end engineering design or detailed engineering design or preliminary engineering design. We don't have to predict what it's going to take to prepare a construction permit and to defend it and to get it permitted because we've done all of it. And the evaluation, the analysis that really began once we got the permit in September of last year, my question to the team was how

Doug Robison (28:44.854)

mature are we on our commercial reactors based on all the work we've just completed internally with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission? And the response coming back is we're way down the road. So when we talk about what does it take to do all the design work, all that R &D, all that licensing work, even the manufacturing, we're already establishing under EPC agreements exactly who's going to be providing components. So we have answered those questions.

Doug Robison (29:12.302)

So they're not new questions that we have to predict about. We can actually say with certainty, we know how to do it because we've done it. So when we build our first commercial reactor, our first of a kind, it is actually not our first of a kind. Our first of a kind is going to be sitting about 50 feet from where Dr. Tao is sitting right now. The demonstration reactor, the research reactors are being deployed at ACU. One of the primary purposes of that pathway is deploying that reactor at ACU so that

Doug Robison (29:39.694)

we can move again, how fast can we get to production? I come from the oil and gas industry. My company grew through the drill bit. What that means is you grow by drilling. If you don't drill, if you don't produce, then you die. How fast do we get to production? How fast do we deploy reactors on the grid? How fast can we get licenses from the NRC to do that? So our pathway has proved successful. And we were not in existence before the middle of 2020 and within two years.

Doug Robison (30:09.516)

We had accelerated to the lead just about everybody out there. And now four years later, we're only one of two that have a permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Doug Lewin (30:19.65)

You know, it seems, so it seems to me like really the key here for so much for deploying this quickly, for building an industry here, for having a learning curve really is that modularity. You keep remembering, I bring this up in a lot of conversations and we'll put a link in the show notes. There was a great podcast that Jigar Shah at the time, the head of the loan program office at DOE. And I want to talk about DOE and the sort of bipartisan nature of this because it has support, it seems across administration. So we can go there in a minute, but

Doug Lewin (30:48.334)

He was on Dave Roberts, Volt's podcast, and he said, the problem with SMR so far is small modular reactors, they're neither small nor modular. that's, that seemed to be, and it seems like you guys, that's, that's not true with Natura. They are both small. We talked about the size a little while ago. They're, they're also modular and that allows for that replicability, which gives you a good shot to really come down that learning curve. I want to ask, and Rusty, think this, I'll ask this one to you first. Is there.

Doug Lewin (31:17.07)

flexibility in this technology. What I mean by that is, like you talked about, I mean, actually Doug was talking a minute ago about like this kind of base load dispatchable generation the governor wanted. We have obviously a large deployment of wind and solar, about 40 gigawatts of wind, about 30 gigawatts of solar. And so we have a system right now where there is an abundance of energy. And of course we have a lot of gas, right? There's like

Doug Lewin (31:43.982)

70, somebody, maybe 68, something like that, gigawatts of gas on the grid. So like, there's a lot of power for most of the hours. Is there an ability, I think maybe with the molten salt to actually like store up some of that power and then deploy it in a flexible kind of a way or does that not exist with this technology?

Rusty Towell (32:04.462)

No. So one of the beautiful things about this technology is you don't have to sort of go to economy of scale to try to make it economical, right? So pressurized water reactor where you need those big containment domes, et cetera. It doesn't make sense to invest in that sort of capital. If you only have a one megawatt, you know, electric plant or something like that, right? It just doesn't, you'll never get the return on the capital investment. So economy of scale is important to those and you have to go big.

Rusty Towell (32:29.9)

With molten salt reactors, you can make them a wide variety of sizes. So yes, we can make them a micro size, teeny tiny. We can make them big grid level size, just as big as the pressurized water reactors. But if we get them that big, at some point they're no longer smaller modular. And so from a business point of view, what Natura Resources is doing, they're saying, let's look at something that seems to be the sweet spot for most industry and still be truly small modular. And so we can build something that's 250 megawatts thermal.

Rusty Towell (32:59.598)

And so if you need 500 megawatts thermal, you build two of them. If you need electric and you need 300 megawatts electric, then build three of them, right? And so they don't take up a lot of space. They can still be dense and compact and you can put several on the same side. And so you can scale it to whatever you want. going back to your question of, go ahead.

Doug Lewin (33:21.934)

I was going to say, they're flexible in that sense, right? That you can deploy them in different, and obviously, and it may just be the answers, like what I'm asking is the answers. It could be no, because, that's okay, because with data centers or DSAL or some industrial processes, have chip manufacturing, you may just have 24-7 and you just want 24-7 power. What I'm asking is, is it rampable?

Rusty Towell (33:43.01)

Yeah. Yeah. So it, you know, does it have this ability to load follow a lot of times people talk about, so in the middle of the day, we need a lot of electricity. Can we ramp them up and at night turn them down? Yes, you can do that. like most, big industrial processor, you know, it doesn't appreciate the changes. It rather runs steady. And so one of the things that we've thought a lot about, and you actually heard it from Natura and their first two commercial deployment is that because it can produce electricity efficiently.

Rusty Towell (34:11.776)

And because it can produce high temperature process heat efficiently, you could easily pair it so that it does both. So one plant or one grouping of plants produces electricity and desalinates water. So you think about Corpus Crispi or someplace along the Texas coast where there's both a shortage of water and a shortage of electricity. Let's do both. And so in the middle of day, we're producing electricity. And at night, when we need less electricity, let's start desalinating water.

Rusty Towell (34:40.898)

Cause water goes in the tank really easy. And beyond that, could you build a thermal storage unit? Ye