Claire Hao
Energy & Power Grid Reporter
Former Gov. Rick Perry is building a nuclear homage to President Donald Trump near Amarillo, he announced recently.
Fermi America, a company Perry co-founded, has announced wildly ambitious plans to build what it says will be the United States’ largest nuclear power complex on 5,800 acres of land owned by Texas Tech University.
The nuclear reactors, along with natural gas power plants and solar arrays, would supply electricity to what Fermi America says will be the world’s largest data center campus. Leading U.S. tech companies would be able to rent space at this campus to pursue their own artificial intelligence ambitions.
The so-called Advanced Energy and Artificial Intelligence Campus project, first reported by the Washington Post, may be named after Trump. The four large-scale nuclear reactors that Fermi America aims to build on-site could also bear the president’s moniker.
In a social media post announcing Fermi America, Perry said the company was answering Trump’s call for “world energy and AI dominance,” echoing language the president has used since the first day of his second term to define his energy agenda. Trump last month issued several executive orders to boost the nation’s nuclear energy potential, though critics say his other policies have undermined the industry at the same time.
China has built 22 nuclear reactors to power AI, while the United States has built none, said Perry, who was Trump’s Energy Secretary during his first term, in a company statement.
“We’re behind, and it’s all hands on deck,” he said in the statement.
Desperate for electricity
The path forward for Fermi America is difficult: The last time a company built large-scale nuclear reactors in the U.S., the Georgia-based project ended up seven years late and $17 billion over budget. The U.S. is behind because the country’s nuclear energy industry has atrophied for decades, while countries such as China and Russia have pushed ahead.
Now, though, the U.S. nuclear industry says it could see a revival as it banks on the potential of a new technology known as small modular reactors, which are theoretically easier and cheaper to build. Texas lawmakers, led by Gov. Greg Abbott, recently bet big on SMRs, putting $350 million of taxpayer funds into boosting such projects.
Fermi, though, is starting out by applying to build large-scale Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactors, the same ones that took so long and cost so much in Georgia. And it wants to build the first one by 2032, a timeline experts think is pushing what’s possible even for SMRs.
Why Fermi America thinks it’ll be successful, executive chairman and Panhandle native Toby Neugebauer said in an interview, is that tech companies with deep pockets are desperate for electricity and eager to help push nuclear projects along. The company has also hired people who’ve led successful projects in China and in the United Arab Emirates, he said.
Each of the four large-scale reactors would be one gigawatt in capacity, Neugebauer said—enough electricity to power 250,000 Texas homes. Fermi America also wants to eventually add up to 2.5 gigawatts of small modular reactors to the site, once designs for those technologies have matured.
Most, if not all, of that power would go to the AI data centers.
“Fermi America is in the artificial intelligence creation business. We’re not in the power business,” Neugebauer said. “But what’s missing in artificial intelligence no longer is chips. It’s no longer algorithms. It’s literally the power.”
‘A nuclear power renaissance’
Neugebauer declined to share specific customers, saying the company was in “advanced discussions” with several. He also declined to share how the project would be financed, other than saying money from “well-known institutions” and family offices has been secured.
The company also plans to seek funding from Abbott’s new $350 million nuclear energy fund, Neugebauer said.
“It’s going to be a fraction of a fraction of the money that is required. But what we’ll be able to show them is a way to leverage their money in an extraordinary way,” he said.
In a statement, Abbott spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris said the governor appreciates the investment Fermi America is making into Texas. “We stand ready to lead a nuclear power renaissance in the United States,” he said.
Reed Clay, president of the Texas Nuclear Alliance, said the trade association pushed for the creation of the fund in hopes of attracting projects like Fermi America’s that make “bold use of nuclear to power AI.”
“These are the projects we knew would come to Texas,” he said.
Can nuclear projects succeed in Texas?
Skeptics of the Texas nuclear energy fund, from left-leaning environmentalists to Republican lawmakers, still doubt whether nuclear projects can be built on time and at lower costs, given the industry’s track record.
Some also point to the lack of solutions for the radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants. Abbott and the Texas attorney general’s office fought to keep such waste out of state at the Supreme Court and recently lost.
Neugebauer says Fermi America has “all the ingredients” it needs to achieve its lofty goals. The land leased from Texas Tech University sits close to pipelines delivering abundant natural gas, which would also help power the site. The company wants to add 600 megawatts of solar arrays too.
The site is also next to the Pantex facility near Amarillo, where the nation’s nuclear weapons are disassembled. That means the region is already familiar and comfortable with proximity to nuclear technologies.
“If you can’t build nuclear at the Pantex facility, the world’s most important nuclear site, then it really can’t be built,” Neugebauer said.
