South Texas Nuclear Project reactor unit 2 control room at Bay City.
An employee walks past the nuclear reactors at South Texas Nuclear Generating Station near Bay City, TX on Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2017.
Nuclear power is making a comeback as a reliable generator of clean energy, and state leaders want to make Texas the epicenter of a new atomic age.
Advocates promise a high-tech, high-paying industry that will drive the Texas economy, but first, they argue, companies will need huge taxpayer handouts to get started. The hard part will be convincing lawmakers without using the words climate change, which is the only reason to subsidize the industry.
If anyone talked about global warming at the Texas Nuclear Summit in Austin on Monday, I don’t remember it. They emphasized how nuclear could provide power 24/7 without emissions, meeting two of the three of the electricity grid’s requirements.
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The third, affordability, is nuclear’s Achilles heel, but Texas is working on it. Companies are working on every link of the supply chain, from mining uranium to splitting the atoms.
Texas has two nuclear facilities: the South Texas Project near the coast in Bay City, operated by Constellation Energy, and Comanche Peak, operated by Vistra in Glen Rose, outside of Fort Worth. Together, the four reactors supply about........