Nearly a decade ago, third-generation Texas oilman Doug Robison was plotting his retirement and the sale of his petroleum company when a trip to his children’s alma mater, Abilene Christian University, changed his career trajectory—at an atomic level.
He heard a brief talk from Rusty Towell, the director of the school’s Nuclear Energy Experimental Testing lab (NEXT), on the potential of next-generation, molten-salt nuclear reactors for affordable power to lift much of the world out of poverty. Robison was sold. “I met him in the back of the room and said, ‘What would you do if you’re fully funded?’ I asked him three times, and he wasn’t ready for the question.” Two weeks later, Towell offered Robison a rough plan. “I said, ‘You’re funded. Let’s go.”
