By Richard Thompson

South Texans have been in an uproar over a proposal from SpaceX to launch its massive Starship rocket 25 times a year from its Boca Chica launch site, and Hawaiians are now joining in to condemn the plans for their own reasons.

During a Monday meeting that the Federal Aviation Administration held to discuss the proposal, residents near the take-off and landing sites of the rocket tests voiced concern over the potential increase in launches. While Starship takes off from a site in Boca Chica, it lands in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii or the Indian Ocean near Australia. Residents across the affected areas are fighting the proposal, claiming that the rocket is harmful to the ocean and to wildlife.

Mainei Kinimaka, a filmmaker and Native Hawaiian, gave condolences to people in Boca Chica, and noted that the affected area in Hawaii "is an extremely important cultural and environmental place."

"Any cultural assessment done properly in this area would easily disprove this being a decent site for dumping debris," Kinimaka said.

Cultural apprehension aside, stakeholders also addressed potential harm to their marine ecosystems, especially since Starship's booster lands in the Gulf of Mexico. Texans said that recreational fishing is under strain as beach closures keep residents out for SpaceX activities, causing an observed decline in fish populations. Hawaiians shared similar fears that more Starship landings in the ocean could affect local fish.

"I am Hawaiian, so we view our ocean as a part of us," Michele Ilae said. Ilae also mentioned concerns about the fact that the incoming administration has already shown favor toward SpaceX. "It shouldn't be okay just because Trump is president, and Elon Musk is a billionaire," IIae said.

While much of the public commentary came from U.S. residents, at least one testimony during Monday's meeting was offered by an Australian.

Bijang Moogerah, who identified as a First Nations person working in conservation and humanitarian aid projects in Australia, stressed that the proposal needed more input from locals.

"I've seen the first hand impacts of the islands and the damages that can be done, not just to the native people, but the native wildlife and environment that the people are still relying on and have a connection to today," Moogerah said. "The people used the environment to navigate, using the stars, marine wildlife, migratory bird species and the weather observations, which SpaceX is putting in jeopardy."

Despite the controversy, the company is carrying on with business as usual; on Wednesday, SpaceX is expected to launch a new generation Starship from South Texas where it will later splash down off the coast of Australia.

By April Lanux

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Hill Air Force Base may receive a portable nuclear reactor by 2028, according to Radiant Nuclear CEO Doug Bernauer. Radiant Nuclear aims to deploy small modular reactors with testing planned at Idaho National Laboratory in 2026. The project could enhance HAFB's resilience and help meet carbon-free electricity goals, energy manager Nick King says.

HILL AIR FORCE BASE — Hill Air Force Base could receive a portable nuclear reactor to provide backup power generation as early as 2028, Radiant Nuclear CEO Doug Bernauer told KSL.com.

"Utah is a great place," Bernauer said in a call from a large space and defense technology investor summit at the Mar-a-Lago Resort in Palm Beach, Florida. "I think it's on the very short list of states that are very pro-nuclear from the top-down and bottom-up."

The energy executive, who spent 12 years working on special projects for Elon Musk at SpaceX, the Boring Company and the Mars colony design, said he left to build Radiant "because I couldn't find any good nuclear technology companies that could build a reactor on time and on budget."

His company has seen recent breakthroughs in funding and regulatory approvals and has been working with state representatives and officials at Hill Air Force Base to study the possibility of bringing small modular reactors to the military installation.

Nuclear in the West

TerraPower on Tuesday received permit approval for construction to begin on its Natrium plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming, which CEO Chris Levesque called "the first state permit ever awarded to a commercial-scale advanced nuclear project."

On smaller scale projects, Radiant Nuclear, based in El Segundo, California, and Westinghouse, a Pennsylvania company, are racing to test design at an Idaho National Laboratory site in Blackfoot once facility modifications are completed in 2026.

The Demonstration of Microreactor Experiments test bed at Idaho National Laboratory, set to repurpose the Experimental-Breeder Reactor-II containment structure to conduct tests in 2026. (Photo: U.S. Department of Energy)

The building, an 80-foot-tall concrete and steel structure that will house the Demonstration of Microreactor Experiments will be the first advanced reactor test bed in the U.S.

Bernauer says he is working to fill the niche of smaller, portable modular reactors, and leveraging connections in Utah to test.

Radiant has been supported by Utah politically and through the military, according to Bernauer. "For the past couple of years (Rep. John Curtis) has supported our efforts to go and fuel a new reactor design, which is our 1-megawatt reactor, " the CEO said. "He has been very helpful in those efforts and trying to help us get access to fuel, access to those facilities, and some more priority at the (Idaho National Lab)."

Former Utah Sen. Mitt Romney was also involved in talks with Radiant to bring the technology to the state.

The last few months have been a whirlwind for the company. In November, it raised $100 million in Series C funding investments after it completed a passive cooldown demonstration, bringing the total funding to $160 million.

Delegates from 47G, a statewide industrial development organization, were also at the Mar-a-Lago summit — President Aaron Starks spoke on Thursday, encouraging some of the largest venture capital firms in the world to consider partnerships with Utah industries.

According to Starks, "Something hindering this industry from growing up until about two years ago was that the initial investment needed to start a company in this space was overwhelming. ... It takes more capital upfront to do the research and development, to do the commercialization, and then to go to market with a prototype."

"You could be hundreds of millions of dollars in before you even get to that point," Starks said. "To go from prototype to growth is a really, really hard jump that few companies can make."

That environment has started to change in the past two years, according to Starks, with increased interest from venture capital firms in alternative energy projects outside the conventional solar and wind.

"The democratization of energy is probably the largest opportunity for us as a state and as a country," Starks said.

Radiant and Hill Air Force Base

Radiant began partnering with Hill Air Force Base in March 2023 to conduct a feasibility study on backup power generation at the installation.

"We ended up doing this study at Hill Air Force Base, in particular, because the base energy manager there, Nick King, was in meetings with the Pentagon, raised his hand and said, 'I would love to have this technology. I would love this to be in Utah,'" Bernauer said.

King said in a statement that the project helps improve the base's "ability to identify failure points and properly plan for system improvements" and could help achieve an executive order requiring 100% carbon pollution-free electricity by 2030.

Experts examined how Radiant's 1.2-megawatt reactors, called Kaleidos, could work with existing systems in long-term outage crisis scenarios.

"As part of that we actually took the whole base and converted it into a computer-based model," Bernauer said, "where we could do a resilience study on it and show if any cable were to go out, what would happen to the base, what would happen to all the assets."

"What we found in our study is that they could actually keep the whole base up and just cut off the noncritical loads, and then be able to recover the base without ever losing power to the critical facilities, so it would be a really big resilience improvement," according to Bernauer.

Hill Air Force Base intentionally cut incoming commercial power for 10 hours at the beginning of November, partly to "identify backup power capability gaps," according to a release. Radiant says their study "helped enhance (Hill's) capability to plan and simulate this exercise."

The nuclear reactors in question are small enough to be delivered on a truck or a C-17 aircraft.

"Our system lasts for five years, and then you shut it down and we come pick it up," Bernauer says.

Radiant is on track to test Kaleidos at the Idaho National Laboratory in 2026, which would be "the first new reactor design to be operated in 50 years," according to the company.

After that — "we'd like to deploy at least one reactor (at Hill Air Force Base), it could be one of the first reactors, which should be as soon as 2028," Bernauer says.

In the ever-changing landscape of young technology and regulation, things could easily change before then, but Bernauer is politically optimistic. "We're really excited to work with this next administration," he said, especially President-elect Donald Trump's pick for energy secretary, Chris Wright, who was confirmed on Thursday.

"It takes more political support, takes the government not being in the way on fuel or test facilities, and also some willingness and some contracts from the military," he said.