Caldwell County residents concerned about nuclear power company's new test site
Caldwell Co. residents concerned about testing facility
Residents in Caldwell County, outside of Lockhart, said they're concerned about a nuclear power company building a test site in their neighborhood. They said no one warned them this was even happening.
CALDWELL COUNTY, Texas - Residents in Caldwell County outside of Lockhart say they're concerned a nuclear power company is building a test site in their neighborhood. They say nobody warned them that this was happening.
Aalo Atomics, headquartered in Austin, says this testing facility won't have any nuclear components, but neighbors are still worried.
Local perspective:
Mary Lynne Seay lives less than a mile from the site.
"They have done this all under the radar without letting anybody in this area know," she said.
Many residents are worried about safety.
Joni Foster's family has been in the area for about one hundred years.
"We are concerned about the environmental impact of all of this stuff. We're not anti-business. We are pro-country, peaceful, and healthy, and safe life," she said.
Seay says she couldn't get ahold of anyone when she had questions.
"Aalo doesn't even have a phone number that you can reach them at their office in Austin. Why? Why is that? Why when people have questions and they want information, we've been told first of all by the construction crew that there wasn't going to be anything that would be environmental. It absolutely is," she said.
By the time neighbors found about the project, construction work had already started at the site.
"Our county commissioners, which I'm very disappointed with, have gone and did this completely under the table without allowing any information to the people who actually live here," Seay said.
In Caldwell County, neighbors are worried about the effects on the testing facility on their families and well-being.
"What's going to happen to our property value? We've probably got close to, just in our house and acreage alone, probably $1.7 million. I'll be surprised if we could give that place away if [this project] succeeds," Seay said. "It's very frustrating to know that [the site] probably won't go away. A lifetime of building something, as we all have, here is probably gone. The safety of my daughter and her husband and their kids is foremost."
Seay says community members are trying to organize against the site. Aalo expects construction to be done by the end of the year.
The other side:
When FOX 7 Austin went to the site, company representatives were also there because construction partners saw a Facebook post about it, and they decided to go out and engage with community members. Residents say that was the first contact they had with the company.
Jared Fraisure is the project manager and lead process engineer at Aalo Atomics. He said they wanted a location close to Austin, and Caldwell County was receptive.
He explains what the testing facility is for.
"When you think of a nuclear power plant, you have the nuclear core that makes heat. There's also support equipment that takes that heat and makes electricity. This facility is to test those components out here, so when we do build a nuclear facility, we have this stuff vetted out, so we know it's going to work in an extra nuclear environment," he said.
He explained what materials would be in the facility.
"This will use very small amounts of water. There is a restroom in the facility, so it's roughly the average household in a month will be the same consumption on this side as well, too. We're drilling a well on this site to hopefully not take up other folks' water around the area. We also have sodium in our facility. There's sodium at the coolant in our reactor. Sodium comes from the table salt. You salt your food. There are some known hazards with sodium, but the facility is designed so that if anything happens, all contained in the facility itself," Fraisure said.
The testing facility will be a square metal building. It will be 3,600 square feet and 60 feet tall.
Aalo says they followed the permitting process for the county. They had several meetings with the county to make sure all the requirements were met.
FOX 7 asked Aalo why they didn't notify residents before construction started.
"That's on me. That's totally on me, we should have been more proactive there. This was kind of on the backburner for a long time until just recently," Fraisure said.
He says they're going to do town halls going forward.
"We want to be good neighbors. We want to be good residents of Caldwell County. We are a nuclear power company. To your point, we could have done a better job at saying this is not a nuclear facility," Fraisure said.
He said they're making themselves more available now.
"I understand their concerns, you know, our ultimate goal is our technology to actually reduce water usage of data centers and actually get these nuclear power plants off the grid so they aren't affecting local residents," he said.
Dig deeper:
FOX 7 Austin asked the Caldwell County Commissioners what their response is to the opposition to the site, why wasn't there engagement with residents, what the permitting process was, and if there is supposed to be economic benefit to having the test site.
The Caldwell County Judge provided the following statement:
"Caldwell County is a rural area near a major hub with vast amounts of buildable, privately owned land and that is a reason why companies seek it out for projects like these. It is understandable that some residents might be concerned about changes happening around them, but announcements about privately owned businesses coming to an area are traditionally handled by the companies themselves.
No public hearing was held because the permits required for county development are administrative and do not come before the County Commissioners Court for consideration. If the code requirements are met, the permits are issued administratively. In addition, no tax abatement or development agreement was requested or offered. This company will pay regular commercial property taxes.
Publicly available online information by the company indicates that no radioactive material will be onsite and that it is not a reactor. For more information, contact information for Aalo Atomics can be found here.
The permitting process is dictated by statute and any commissioners court in the state of Texas must follow the process. They have an intake meeting; we respond to their flood plain and site permit and we have zero control over what is built there.
Permits required by the county are a Commercial Site Development Permit (Drainage review), a Driveway Permit, and an On-Site Wastewater Permit (Septic permit) and are routine items that are approved by the county’s Engineering and sanitation office.
The benefit to the county is that these investments drive down the tax rate for constituents while providing more income for the county to continue to provide services to an ever-growing population without placing the burden on individual property owners."
What's next:
The State of Texas recently launched the Texas Advanced Nuclear Energy Office which created a $350 million fund to support the nuclear energy industry.
While the Caldwell County site was purchased before the initiative was established, Aalo is looking at other sites for commercial deployment, including the Texas A&M RELLIS campus.
Aalo Atomics says they've been working on a facility called Aalo-X in Idaho. That will be the company's first nuclear power plant.
Aalo-X in Idaho is a project under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy's Reactor Pilot Program.
The Source: Information in this report comes from interviews/reporting by FOX 7 Austin's 7 On Your Side reporter Angela Shen.