Abbott, Perry: Nuclear energy is national security

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(The Center Square) – Texas institutions developing nuclear energy and winning the Artificial Intelligence (AI) race are imperative to national security, Gov. Greg Abbott and former Gov. Rick Perry argued at an event in Austin hosted by the Texas Nuclear Alliance. 

“The AI race is a race that we absolutely have to win,” Perry said. “We have to win this AI driven or data center race because the Chinese are making great extraordinary moves and we are behind.” 

Perry co-founded Fermi America, which is partnering with Texas Tech to build the “first-of-its-kind behind-the-meter HyperGrid™ campus” that will “integrate the largest nuclear power complex in America, the nation's biggest combined-cycle natural gas project, utility grid power, solar power, and battery energy storage to deliver next-generation artificial intelligence,” The Center Square reported. 

Being built near Pantex, a primary nuclear facility, it’s projected to deliver up to 11 gigawatts of power and 18 million square feet of AI capacity, it says. It and multiple AI companies have identified the panhandle and oil rich Permian Basin in west Texas as the center of their operations, The Center Square reported. 

"The Chinese are building 22 nuclear reactors today to power the future of AI," Perry said. "America has none. We're behind, and it's all hands-on-deck.”

“The Chinese are not building nuclear reactors so that people have more air conditioning in China. They're not damming the world's highest river so that they can lower consumer prices for air conditioning in China. They are doing these things in a preliminary act of artificial intelligence war against the United States. This is a fight we must win,” Fermi America cofounder and CEO Toby Neugebauer said. He also said Abbott and the Texas legislature understand that developing nuclear energy and winning the AI race “is about defending western civilization.”

Abbott and the state legislature advanced legislation earlier this year to make Texas the nuclear capital of the world; entrepreneurs and Texas universities are working to accomplish this, The Center Square reported. But because the U.S. hasn’t invested in developing large scale nuclear energy and infrastructure, AI is needed to help bring facilities online faster, more efficiently and economically, lawmakers and those in the industry argue.  

“The arc of our planet is changing,” Abbott told a room of several hundred people. He also said winning the nuclear and AI war was imperative to preparing the U.S. for the future of warfare. Future wars won’t occur on battlefields in the Middle East, Russia or Ukraine, he said, but in space: “outer space or cyberspace through artificial intelligence, robotics, drones, and satellites.”

“A satellite has, and will, have the capability of completely eliminating a battleship on the sea, a group of tanks, a brigade of soldiers, whatever the case may be, the battle taken place in space has already occurred,” he said. “That's why you see this massive space race,” pointing to the work of SpaceX, which has revolutionized space technology. 

“The United States must achieve world dominance in space,” which involves achieving world dominance in AI, he said. Abbott also cited examples of the U.S. being the first to develop the nuclear bomb, ending World War II, winning the space race in the 1960s, as an analogy for the U.S. achieving AI dominance within the next decade.

AI dominance will be defined over the next 10 years by who wins the modern AI and space race, he said. “That's why there's such an urgent need on a daily, hourly, minute by minute basis that we're all leaning into and striving to win that race. Because the fact of the matter is the future of civilization itself is going to be defined by the winner of that race,” he said. 

“Texas will not cede that ability to the Chinese or to any other country,” Abbott said. The United States must win, and Texas must “lead the way for a nuclear power renaissance in the United States to empower our future. Texas must be the epicenter for nuclear power generation or must be the epicenter for nuclear energy supply chain.”  

This is why the state legislature created the Texas Advanced Nuclear Energy Office and Abbott appointed its leader, Jarred Shaffer, who helped craft nuclear legislation he signed into law that is already in effect. The state’s $350 million Advanced Nuclear Development Fund was created to encourage investment in Texas, which Abbott says is “the largest fund of its kind in any state” in the U.S. “It is replicable, it is scalable. It's just that we haven't seen another state commit to it the same way that we have,” he said.  

He also told those in the industry that the state of Texas “will do everything we can to accelerate your ability to get across the finish line in whatever project you're working on.” 

“The demand is extraordinary,” he said, but Texas has the resources, structure and strategy “to be able to advance a nuclear renaissance … and build the future of nuclear power in America.”