Texas Atomic Community Outreach Desk
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Welcome to the UT Texas Atomic Community Outreach Desk
The University of Texas at Austin Texas Atomic Community Outreach (TACO) Desk was created by the same experts who helped build recommendations for the Texas Advanced Nuclear Working Group to support the 2025 Texas Legislative Session beginning in January. We anticipate significant nuclear-power related bills will be proposed this session and want to empower legislators, staffers, and private citizens to make the best policies for Texas. The TACO Desk was built to help everyone build fact-based, no-hype, sound nuclear power policy to address energy security challenges in Texas.
How and when to use the UT TACO Desk
The intent of the UT TACO Desk is to make nuclear power policy accessible and actionable. If you have a question about nuclear power, you can ask it here. Questions can be as fundamental as "what even is fission?" or as nuanced as "what was the problem the Texas Advanced Nuclear Working Group was trying to solve with their granual nuclear energy credit?" Questions generally fall into one of the following buckets: Technology, Policy, or General.
For go-live January 6th, we'll be answering questions through a webform platform found in the "Ask a Question" buttons on this page. We anticipate a live, webchat, direct call, and scheduling features will be online mid-January 2025.
Who responds to my questions?
This is the real beauty of the TACO Desk! We have a curated list of experts to respond to your questions. While the TACO Desk is run by the University of Texas at Austin, we're including other key contributors necessary to build out an advanced nuclear power industry here in Texas. We triage and assign questions to the most appropriate person suited to answer the question. Examples of responders may include: UT professors, lawyers, utility companies, reactor developers, etc. If we don't have a responder actively supporting the TACO Desk but you've asked a question that might benefit from a truly nuanced answer, we'll help you make the connection to the right person without you having to do any of the legwork.
How can the TACO Desk specifically help legislators and their staff?
The TACO Desk is powered by the same experts who helped build the recommendations, analysis, and direction of the Texas Advanced Nuclear Report published by Governor Abbott in November 2024. We can help you better understand the why behind all recommendations, connect you with the specific folks who crafted individual recommendations, and teach you about nuclear power. The goal of the TACO Desk is to help promote a good-governance approach to building nuclear power policy to respect Texas taxypayers' potential investment and help provide a safe and secure energy supply for their families and communities.
If you are (or support) a Texas legislator, we are happy to hop on calls with you, deep dive into specific issues, build issue briefs, and connect you with subject matter experts to make your job easier to do well.