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Senator Cornyn says he will support NEXT Lab’s progress in DC

U.S. Senator John Cornyn toured Abilene Christian University’s Nuclear Energy eXperimental Testing Lab Tuesday. Cornyn praised the facility, saying he believed the project is on the cusp of groundbreaking discoveries in energy, water, and medicine.

Cornyn said Texas is an “all of the above” state when it comes to producing energy, but he thinks nuclear will be important for producing cheap energy in the future, “There will come a time when we will be depending more and more on things like safe nuclear power and less and less on things like natural gas and the like. Something that’s critical today, but it will not always be that way and we need to prepare for the future.”

Cornyn says he will work to cut through bureaucracy for the project. If approvals remain on schedule, the NEXT Lab anticipates having its reactor operational in 2026.

Heather Claborn joined KACU as news director in January 2018. She oversees daily newscast and feature reporting and works with KACU’s news anchors to develop newscasts. She also conducts two-way interviews, reports for newscast and feature stories and maintains the station’s social media and website content. In 2020, Claborn helped staff develop the daily newsletter that is delivered by email.