The project is unaffiliated with Stargate, the data center complex that's being built north of Abilene as part of OpenAI and Oracle's $500 billion of planned artificial intelligence investments, Michael Crabb, Last Energy's senior vice president of commercial, said in an interview.
But Stargate is an example of the potentially "sizable" electricity demand from data centers coming to Texas that Last Energy hopes to capitalize on, he said.
Last Energy has already secured a 200-acre site in Haskell County, according to Matt Fossen, the company's vice president of communications. The startup filed an application to connect to the Texas power grid earlier this month and is working on pre-application activities with the federal nuclear regulator, he said. The goal is to deploy the first reactor by the end of 2029.
The announcement aligns with the ambitions of Texas' leaders, who want the state to become a hub for both advanced nuclear technologies and power-intensive data centers that host equipment needed to develop artificial intelligence.
Gov. Greg Abbott directed a working group to study how the state could court the nuclear industry. In a statement, Abbott said Last Energy's proposed project would help fulfill Texas' growing data center demand.
"Texas must become a national leader in advanced nuclear energy. By working together with industry leaders like Last Energy, we will usher in a nuclear power renaissance in the United States," Abbott said in the company's Friday news release.
'Astounding' Power Demand
The Abilene-area development is Last Energy's first announced project in the United States and its biggest to date. In total, the project proposes adding 600 megawatts of capacity, which is enough electricity for approximately 150,000 Texas homes on the hottest summer days.
Crabb said the company picked Texas in part because the Electric Reliability Council of Texas has forecasted that the state's electricity demand could roughly double in the next decade.
"That's astounding, right? It's unlike anything we've seen throughout history. Even if that's wrong by a little bit, there's still an enormous build-out (of power supply) needed to support that," Crabb said.
Though even ERCOT is unsure if its power demand forecast is accurate, Texas is still expected to see a surge in electricity use in the coming years. A substantial part of that increase is projected to come from data center developers attracted to the state's plentiful land and cheap electricity prices for industrial facilities.
Growing power demand has helped resurrect the previously stagnant U.S. nuclear industry, as some data center customers are willing to pay a premium for electricity that's available 2 4/7 and generated without climate-warming emissions. Otherwise, Big Tech companies would have to rely even more on natural gas power plants, which would threaten their environmental commitments and the country's goals to slow climate change.
"Last Energy's Haskell County project is a model of how next-generation nuclear can integrate seamlessly into high-demand industries and showcases how innovation can drive both energy security and the future of global connectivity," said Reed Clay , president of the Texas Nuclear Alliance, in a statement. Last Energy is a founding member of that industry association.
'A Mass Manufacturable Product'
But advanced nuclear technologies have to overcome significant barriers, including high construction costs, before the hype becomes reality. No commercial "small modular reactors," the kind of nuclear plants that Last Energy plans to build, have come online in the United States. Three are operational worldwide.
That makes Last Energy's goal to build 30 "micro" reactors near Abilene alone particularly eye-catching.
Crabb and Fossen said Last Energy believes these plans are achievable because its reactors are based on existing pressurized water reactor technology using low-enriched uranium. The plants also have a capacity of just 20 megawatts, a fraction of the output of a traditional nuclear plant.
"What we're trying to do as a business is convert nuclear development from complex, highly bespoke construction projects to a mass manufacturable product," Fossen said.
Last Energy has built three prototypes to prove the company's engineering and manufacturing capabilities, including one located in Brookshire, Fossen said. The company's reactors are designed to be ordered, fabricated, delivered and assembled in a 24-month period, though all project development timelines are subject to permitting and licensing, he said.
The nuclear reactors would be enveloped in an underground, 12-inch steel containment system, "which functions like a metal shield," to mitigate safety concerns, Fossen said.
The first reactor is estimated to cost approximately $100 million, Crabb said. The cost is expected to decrease as the company becomes more efficient through iteration, he said.
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