Earthship Corporation plans to build a nuclear research reactor at Proto-Town, a new development in Lockhart, according to a filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation on Mar. 11. The proposed facility will be located at 2600 Mineral Springs Road and is expected to cover 7,600 square feet with an estimated cost of $23 million. The plans are preliminary and may change.
Proto-Town is envisioned as a company town for tech manufacturing and was recently approved by Caldwell County commissioners. Earthship pitched the project as an “innovation hub” modeled after similar developments in China, aiming to provide temporary living quarters for researchers alongside manufacturing facilities.
The company was founded by Merle Nye and Joshua Farahzad, both former Duke University students with backgrounds in tech hardware startups. They have received support from John Cyrier, a former Texas House representative who represented Caldwell County from 2015 to 2023. Cyrier assisted in acquiring the 538-acre site south of Lockhart for the development and is listed as the owner of Mineral Springs Frontier LLC, which owns the land through Earthship. Cyrier declined to comment on the reactor project.
For expertise on the nuclear reactor, Earthship has recruited nuclear scientist Thomas Eiden, who previously founded a startup producing radioisotopes used in nuclear medicine. Eiden did not immediately respond for comment regarding his involvement.
This will not be Central Texas’s first nuclear research reactor; the University of Texas operates one at its J.J. Pickle Research Campus in Austin, about 35 miles north of Lockhart.
The addition of Proto-Town’s research reactor signals continued growth and diversification in Central Texas’s technology sector as developers look beyond traditional urban centers.
