I've been speaking and writing for some time now on how the future of energy has to encompass nuclear power. We solve today's problems with tomorrow's technology, and nuclear technology is changing; new reactor designs and the increasing capacity to re-use and re-refine fuels are making nuclear power more attractive than ever.
Nuclear power is clean, high-energy-density, and low-emission. It's everything everyone wants in electricity generation, it's here now, and it's only going to get better.
To that end, a private university in Abilene, Texas, right on the edge of the famous Permian Basin, is building the first example of a new technology - the small modular reactor, or SMR.
A quiet energy revolution is underway in the heart of West Texas. Abilene, a small town on the edge of the Permian Basin—America’s largest oil-producing region—is now home to the first Small Modular Reactor (SMR) under construction in the United States. In a moment laced with irony and historical significance, the energy stronghold known for oil and gas is pivoting, not away from its roots, but toward a bold expansion into nuclear power. And not just any nuclear, but advanced molten salt technology, designed to redefine safety, scalability, and reliability in power generation.
This project, outlined in Ed Ireland’s Substack post, is more than a technical novelty. It represents a critical litmus test for the future of American energy policy, offering a real-world alternative to the centralized planning disasters of Net Zero dogma. Instead of subsidized solar farms and wind turbines cluttering up the grid with unreliable power, we are seeing investment flow into nuclear innovation that operates on real physics and genuine potential.
If this works - if this new reactor design performs according to advertised specs - it will be a game-changer. And this is a molten-salt reactor, which is virtually meltdown-proof, making it even safer as well as being more efficient.
Here's the best part of all this:
In contrast to the typical parade of government grants and green subsidies, this SMR project is being bankrolled the old-fashioned way: through private capital, particularly from the oil patch itself. Ed Ireland writes:
“The initial funding for the Abilene SMR project came from wealthy West Texas oilmen. Natura’s founder and longtime Texas oilman, Douglas Robison, donated over $30 million to ACU to create the advanced nuclear lab.”
https://edireland.substack.com/p/the-first-smr-small-modular-reactorThat’s right—oilmen, not climate activists, are leading the charge for nuclear. Why? Because they understand energy and risk, unlike the bureaucrats trying to force-feed us inefficient wind and solar under the guise of sustainability.
And that's as it should be; people who understand energy develop energy sources.
See Also: Coming Soon to a Grid Near You: A Nuclear Renaissance
Want Clean, 'Green' Electricity? New Modular Reactor Project in Tennessee Is the Answer.
Our lifestyle, our modern, technological way of life - which, incidentally, allows you to read these words, and me to write them for publishing from a small office in the Alaska woods, depends on reliable energy and plenty of it. Small reactors of this type have the enormous potential to provide clean, high-density energy. They’re uniquely useful in small, isolated communities. (Like, say, much of Alaska.) And now the NRC has approved one design. Each subsequent application will, we can hope, go through with equally surprising celerity. But this new technology will have to overcome determined opposition from the climate scolds at every step of the way, making it almost impossible to use them to provide the abundant, clean energy that these opponents of nuclear power claim to want.
The scolds, of course, don't want this reliable, constant power. They would rather have low-density, intermittent sources; solar and wind are primary among them. Forget what these people claim to want. Look at what they actually are in favor of: You (not they) reducing your standard of living to meet their claimed goals. Look at the actions of the high-profile members of the opposition: Jetting around the globe in private jets, living in huge mansions a few feet above the tide line in the oceans they claim are rising out of control. They expect you to pay the price they aren’t willing to. We are expected to surrender our lifestyle so that the scolds can claim to have maintained the earth at some imaginary correct temperature.
But things are changing now. In Abilene, today, we see the beginning of an energy revolution that may, once and for all, show up the climate scolds for what they are - ill-informed control freaks.
