Since Texas Tech University and Fermi America made a big splash unveiling their plans for the Advanced Energy and Intelligence Campus in June, news has been quiet.

At the time, the company promised to make the 5,769-acre site in Amarillo, Texas, “the largest nuclear power complex in America.” Now, with the recent signing of a memorandum of understanding and the hiring of two nuclear professionals, Fermi America’s cofounders—former Texas governor and energy secretary Rick Perry and his son, Griffin Perry—are one small step closer to achieving their ambitious goals.

February has been big for nuclear in the state of Texas. On February 2, Governor Greg Abbott declared “It’s time for Texas to lead a nuclear power renaissance in the United States.” Two days later, Texas A&M University invited four advanced reactor developers—Aalo Atomics, Kairos Power, Natura Resources, and Terrestrial Energy—to build nuclear capacity on its RELLIS campus. On February 18 Natura announced plans for two 100-MWe molten salt reactors—one at TAMU RELLIS and the other in the Permian Basin—through a partnership with the Texas Produced Water Consortium and Texas Tech University. And today, Last Energy announced plans to site 30 microreactors—20-MWe pressurized water reactors—at a 200-acre site in northwestern Texas to power data centers.

The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) announced $10 million in funding on February 17 for eight projects designed to determine whether low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR)—historically and sometimes disparagingly known as “cold fusion”—could someday be a carbon-free energy source. ARPA-E intends the funding to “break the stalemate” and determine if LENR holds any merit for future energy research.