SEADRIFT, Texas—Dow is hoping to convert its sprawling plastics and packaging materials plant here from gas-fired power to a complex of four modular nuclear reactors. The project, a partnership between Dow and X-energy, is in the vanguard of a wave of new interest and applications for nuclear power projects the state. These so-called “advanced” new-generation reactors, with only two examples in operation, are intended to pave the way toward mass production, a gamble intended to bring down the historically outsized construction costs that have dogged the industry.
Positive press generated to date credits Dow's potential switch for a significant reduction in greenhouse gases. Widespread oil and gas industry expansion in recent decades, alongside the corresponding destruction of climate-stabilizing ecosystems—like Earth's forests—are rapidly overheating the planet and increasing the millions of annual avoidable deaths due to industrial warming and fossil fuel pollution. But longtime critics of Dow don’t see much praiseworthy in this proposed swapping out of gas for nukes. They only see the acceleration of decades of plasticization of area waterways.
Seadrift resident Diane Wilson, founder of the San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeepers, recently challenged Dow's local operations via a 25-day hunger strike, which only concluded with her March 2026 arrest while attempting to deliver her demand letter to Dow officials here.
“They literally locked the front door, peeked through the windows, and called the cops,” she wrote Deceleration this week.
Those demands, later sent by certified letter, included a desired commitment from Dow for “zero discharge” of plastics and a rescinding of its nuclear power application, which has already cleared an early hurdle with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. (The company did not respond to Deceleration’s request for comment before our publication deadline.)
“Violating the Clean Water Act and using the region as a guinea pig for dangerous nuclear reactors are completely unacceptable,” Wilson wrote Jim Fitterling, Dow’s chair and chief executive officer.
Last weekend, Wilson opened a community gathering on the topic of nuclear reactors, saying her primarily concern is the ongoing operation of the facility, which she described as a voracious plastics polluter.
The People's Conference on Nuclear Power Reactors sought to meld the fight against plastics pollution with resistance to the revival of nuclear power.
"I know a lot of bad things that they have done," Wilson said. "That really destroys my trust in [Dow], and primarily that is what I have an issue with."
In Brief
Attendees and speakers at the recent People's Conference on Nuclear Power Reactors in Seadrift, Texas. Images: Greg Harman
Radioactive Waste & Cancer
The Seadrift conference speakers recognized the plastics pollution issue but focused on what was described as a compounding threat: operating nuclear pollution and long-lived radioactive waste.
Speakers experienced in battling nuclear power behemoths—hailing from cities like San Diego, Calif., to Buffalo, New York, to Austin, Texas—insisted that the new generation of reactors generate the same hazards as do the larger power plants etched into global awareness: Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three-Mile Island.
Tim Judson, executive director of Nuclear Information & Resource Service, which describes itself as "a national non-profit organization devoted to a nuclear-free, carbon-free world," walked the small roomful of attendees through the process of uranium mining, nuclear power production, and problem of radioactive waste disposal. Critics of the technology routinely point to the well-documented challenges of disposing of its waste stream, some of which remains hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years.
“The thing that everyone thinks about is the high-level radioactive waste, the fuel,” Judson said. “But the reactor itself is releasing radiation all the time. So there is something called ‘routine’ waste. This is when the reactor is releasing liquid and gaseous radioactive waste. It’s just part of the normal operation.”