This Austin Suburb May Get a Nuclear Research Reactor

A new kind of smoke is about to rise over the Barbecue Capital of Texas.

Proto-Town, a recently approved development in Lockhart envisioned as a company town for tech manufacturing, will include a nuclear research reactor, according to a filing with the state. The developer, Earthship Corporation, registered plans with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation for a 7,600-square-foot nuclear research reactor at 2600 Mineral Springs Road. The project has an estimated cost of $23 million, according to the filing. TDLR plans are preliminary and subject to change.

Earthship was founded by former Duke University students Merle Nye and Joshua Farahzad, who previously founded or worked in other tech hardware startups, according to their LinkedIn accounts.

County commissioners approved a development agreement with Earthship last year. The company pitched Proto-Town as a Chinese-style “innovation hub” for hardware startups that will include temporary living quarters for researchers alongside manufacturing facilities.

Nye and Farahzad have the backing of former Texas House representative John Cyrier, a Republican who represented a district that included Caldwell County from 2015 to 2023. Cyrier helped them acquire the 538 acres of ranch land south of Lockhart for the development, according to local reporting, and he is listed as the owner of Mineral Springs Frontier LLC, a subsidiary of Earthship that owns the land.

Cyrier declined to speak about the reactor project.

Trained as a mechanical engineer, Cyrier was a member of the Austin Area Research Organization, a nonprofit advocacy group founded to “research the economic and social challenges facing Central Texas and influence action for the long-term good of the region,” according to its website.

Earthship recruited nuclear scientist Thomas Eiden for the project, the filing shows. Eiden founded a startup that produces radioisotopes used in nuclear medicine, according to his website. Eiden did not immediately respond for comment.

It won’t be the first nuclear research reactor in Central Texas. The University of Texas operates a reactor at the J.J. Pickle Research Campus in Austin, which is about 35 miles north of Lockhart.