The request
A screening tool should be tested against what developers actually do. This example covers two checks Voltane ran on itself and published, good results and bad:
- Do real US nuclear projects sit on the sites Voltane lists as candidates? (How Voltane scores real projects)
- Where does the land Voltane finds in Texas meet the real ERCOT interconnection queue? (Where Texas can still connect)
What the engine checked
Nuclear. The rule was written down before any match was read: every US commercial nuclear power-reactor project, new plants and restarts, with an application filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission since January 1, 2020 that was pending or approved as of October 16, 2026. That gave 12 projects, plus 5 in pre-application. A project matches a Voltane candidate when its site is within 3 miles of one, or when the docket names an existing plant as the site. No site was placed by estimate.
Texas queue. ERCOT's August 2026 Generation Interconnection Status report lists 1,751 projects totalling 432.6 GW. Voltane placed 1,403 of them (80%) at a substation or line: 807 with a confident match and 596 with a lower-confidence one. It could not place 348. The land side is Voltane's Texas view of 100 MW+ sites: 22,740 sites in 195 counties, each large enough for 100 MW or more, within 10 miles of a 138 kV or higher line, inside ERCOT, and passing every exclusion.
What came back
Nuclear: 8 of the 12 projects sit on a Voltane candidate site. 5 of those match in the top quarter of all 504 candidates for SMRs. 3 projects are not on the candidate list at all, and 1 could not be placed.
| Project | SMR match, out of 100 | Rank of 504 |
|---|---|---|
| Grand Gulf (early site permit renewal, Mississippi) | 93.3 | 3 |
| North Anna (early site permit renewal, Virginia) | 85.1 | 67 |
| Duane Arnold (restart, Iowa) | 84.4 | 73 |
| Palisades restart and Pioneer Units 1 and 2 (same site, Michigan) | 82.3 | 96 |
| Crane, the Three Mile Island restart (Pennsylvania) | 74.5 | 214 |
| Project Matador (Texas) | 72.5 | 244 |
| Clinch River (Tennessee) | 69.8 | 300 |
The misses: Kemmerer (Wyoming) is 106 miles from the nearest candidate, Long Mott (Texas) 47 miles and Belews Creek (North Carolina) 15 miles. Blue Energy at the Port of Victoria (Texas) is unplaced, because its coordinates could not be retrieved from a primary source. In pre-application, 2 of the 5 named sites are Voltane candidates.
Texas: the queue pressure is uneven. 92 counties have at least 100 sites in the view. In 61 of them, at least 1,000 MW is already queued. In the other 31, less than 1,000 MW is queued, and they hold 5,566 sites, 24% of the view. Gaines County leads them with 304 sites and 0 MW queued, followed by Zavala (278 sites) and Floyd (229). At the other end, Pecos County has 20,699 MW queued against 727 sites, and Brazoria has 11,672 MW against 53.
What stayed unknown
- Operating coal and coal-to-gas plants. Kemmerer and Belews Creek sit next to plants with no retirement date on file, so Voltane never counted them as candidates.
- Industrial hosts. Long Mott is a reactor for process heat at a chemical plant. Voltane screens for grid power and has no family for industrial hosts.
- Missing data. Palisades and Pioneer lose points on flood because Voltane's flood data does not model Great Lakes shorelines. That is "unknown", not a finding of flood risk.
- Grid room. Queued MW is a proxy for competition, never available capacity. Most queued projects never get built, and a county total says nothing about which substation has room. A crowded county is a warning sign, not a closed door, and a quiet county is not a promise.
- Unplaced projects. 348 queue projects could not be placed at a substation or line. The county comparison uses the county ERCOT lists for every project, placed or not.
- Geography inside a county. A large county can have a crowded substation on one side and open land on the other.
What a client would do next
Use a screen the way these checks suggest: as a first pass that names its own gaps.
- Start with the land, then look at who else wants the same lines. A light queue is a reason to look closer, not a finding of capacity.
- Ask what the screen cannot see for your project type, and treat every "unknown" as an open question with a next check, not as a pass.
- Take the shortlist to the utility or grid operator for a study before any commitment.
To have Voltane run the search for your requirements, start at Find me a site. For a site you already hold, Analyze my site is available by request. The sample brief shows what a result looks like, and time to power explains the estimate that sits beside it.
Questions people ask
How many real nuclear projects sit on a Voltane candidate site?
8 of the 12 projects with an NRC application since January 1, 2020 that was pending or approved as of October 16, 2026. 3 are not on the candidate list, and 1 could not be placed from a primary source.
Does a county with a light queue have grid capacity?
Not necessarily. Queued MW is a proxy for competition, never available capacity. A quiet county is not a promise, and only a study by the utility or grid operator shows what a substation can take.
Why does Voltane publish its misses?
Because a screen is only useful if you know where it fails. The misses here point to operating coal plants with no retirement date, industrial heat hosts and places where data is missing.
Sources
- U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission: new and advanced reactor applications
- ERCOT Generation Interconnection Status report (PG7-200-ER)
Related
- Find me a site
- Analyze my site
- Sample Opportunity Brief
- How Voltane scores real projects
- Where Texas can still connect
- Glossary: time to power
More worked examples
- Worked example: a Texas solar shortlist, from request to brief
- Worked example: backtesting time to power on public ERCOT data
- Worked example: a 300 MW data center request in ERCOT
Need a site, or have one?
Tell us what you need and Voltane finds, reports on and prices candidate sites in ERCOT. Or bring a site you already have for a path-to-power report (by request for now).