On the outskirts of a small mining town in southwestern Wyoming, a multi-billion dollar effort is underway to build the first of America's new generation of nuclear power plants.
Workers began construction Tuesday on a new type of nuclear reactor that is smaller and cheaper than traditional, giant nuclear reactors and designed to generate electricity without emitting the carbon dioxide that is rapidly warming the planet.
The reactor, which startup TerraPower is building, isn't due to be completed until 2030 at the earliest, and it faces daunting obstacles: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has yet to approve the design, and the company will have to overcome the inevitable delays and cost overruns that have doomed countless nuclear projects.
But TerraPower has an influential and deep-pocketed founder: Bill Gates, currently the seventh-richest person in the world, has pumped more than $1 billion into the company, and expects that figure to grow.
“If you care about the climate, there are lots of places around the world where nuclear power could work,” Gates said in an interview Monday near the project site. “I'm not in this to make money. I'm in this because we need to build a lot of these reactors.”
Gates, the former head of Microsoft, believes the best way to solve climate change is through innovation that makes clean energy competitive with fossil fuels, and he outlined that philosophy in his 2021 book, “How to Avoid a Climate Catastrophe.”
There is renewed interest in nuclear power across the country, with several start-up companies racing to build small reactors and the Biden administration offering huge tax credits for new plants.
Anticipation for TerraPower's project is especially strong among the 3,000 residents of nearby Wyoming towns of Kemmerer and Diamondville, whose economies have depended on a coal-fired power plant and nearby coal mines for decades, but the plant is scheduled to close by 2036 as the country transitions away from coal-fired power.
New reactors, and the jobs they bring, could be a lifeline.
“A few years ago, when there were rumors going around that the mine and the power plant were going to go away, the community wasn't happy,” said Mary Crosby, a Kemmerer resident who wrote the county grant application. “The reactor gives us an opportunity,” she said.
At a recent conference in New York, David Klain, undersecretary for infrastructure at the Department of Energy, said he “didn't see much need” for next-generation nuclear reactors two years ago. But with electricity demand soaring due to new data centers, factories and electric vehicles, Klain said he has become “very bullish” on nuclear power, which provides carbon-free electricity 24 hours a day without taking up much land.
The challenge, Crane said, was building the power plant: “None of the things we're trying to do are easy.”
A new type of nuclear reactor
Gates became interested in nuclear power in the early 2000s after scientists convinced him that huge amounts of emission-free electricity were needed to combat global warming, and he questioned whether wind and solar power would be enough, because they don't run all the time.
“Wind and solar are really great, and we need to build them as fast as we can, but there's no way we don't need more,” Gates said, wondering how Chicago will heat homes during its long winters, when there is little wind or sun.
But the problem with nuclear power is that it's prohibitively expensive. Conventional reactors are huge, complex, and highly regulated projects that are difficult to build and difficult to finance. Only two U.S. reactors have been built in the past 30 years, Vogtle 3 and 4 in Georgia, which cost $35 billion to build, more than double original estimates, and were completed seven years behind schedule.
Gates is convinced that radically different technology can help: At TerraPower, he has funded a team of hundreds of engineers to redesign nuclear power plants from the ground up.
Currently, all nuclear power plants in the United States use light water reactors, where water is pumped into the reactor core, where it is heated by atomic fission to produce steam, which creates electricity. Because the water is under high pressure, these nuclear plants require heavy piping and thick containment shields to prevent accidents.
TerraPower's reactor, by contrast, uses liquid sodium instead of water, allowing it to operate at lower pressures, theoretically reducing the need for thick shielding. In an emergency, it could be cooled by vents rather than a complex system of pumps. At 345 megawatts, the reactor is one-third the size of Vogtle's and would require less investment.
TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque said his company's reactors should ultimately be able to produce electricity at half the cost of a conventional nuclear power plant. “It's a much simpler power plant,” he said. “It has safety benefits and cost advantages.”
TerraPower's design has another unique feature: Most nuclear reactors can't easily adjust their output, making them difficult to work with volatile wind or solar farms. But TerraPower's reactor is equipped with molten-salt batteries, which allow the plant to increase or decrease its output as needed.
“This helps economically,” Levesque says, “because you can store energy and then sell it back to the grid when it becomes more valuable.”
Still, it remains to be seen whether TerraPower can actually realize cost savings. The company estimates the Kemmerer reactor will cost $4 billion in 2022, with the Department of Energy covering up to $2 billion. That's already more expensive than modern gas and renewable energy plants, and costs could rise further.
Recent attempts to build nuclear plants have been hampered by delays and unexpected costs, said David Schlissel, director of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Last year, in Idaho, another startup, NuScale, abandoned plans to build six small light-water reactors after struggling with rising prices.
“There is no evidence that these small reactors can be built faster or cheaper than larger reactors,” Schlissel said, arguing that utilities should prioritize safer investments such as wind, solar and battery storage.
Gates acknowledged that TerraPower's first plants will likely be especially expensive as the company works its way through a learning curve, but he said the company can absorb that financial risk in a way that utilities and regulators can't. (Besides Gates, TerraPower has raised $830 million from outside investors.)
The company says if it can get past early hurdles and build multiple reactors, it can reduce costs and become economically competitive.
“We're taking a risk, and because of our design we're very comfortable with that risk,” Gates said, “but it means we have to be very well funded.”
Searching for a lifeline
In Kemmerer, officials are hoping the gamble will pay off: This part of Wyoming has relied on coal, oil and gas since the first mine opened in 1887, but U.S. coal consumption has fallen by half in the past 20 years.
The Norton coal plant, south of town, sits amid a sagebrush-filled landscape and employed about 250 workers at its peak. When PacificCorp, the utility that owns the plant, announced it would retire the facility a few years ago, many wondered what would replace it. (The closure has since been postponed to 2036.)
(It also helped that Kemmerer officials were supportive, Gates said.) The plant would employ 250 people and create 1,600 temporary construction jobs.
“Now we're getting calls from all over the country saying they want the job,” said Jerry Payne, operations manager for the union that represents many coal plant workers, International Electrical Workers Local 322. “This means a lot to Kemmerer.”
After losing residents for decades, Kemmerer is showing signs of revival, with a new coffee shop, Fossil Fuel Coffee Co., and several other businesses opening downtown and two large housing developments planned on the outskirts.
Concerns remain surrounding the project, particularly its timeline: In 2022, TerraPower announced a two-year delay as it would no longer buy nuclear fuel from Russia and needed to find a new supplier.
“People kept asking when this building was going to be built,” Kemmerer Mayor Bill Thek said, “but when they see the dirt moving, it gives them energy.”
Last fall, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission held a public hearing in town to answer questions from anxious residents: Have regulators considered earthquakes? (Yes.) Is there a permanent place to store the plant's radioactive waste? (Not yet.)
“Some people are excited about this technology, and some people are nervous about it,” said Madonna Long, a Kemmerer native who left for decades before returning to start a medical supplies business in 2020. “But we're not seeing anyone knock on our door and say, 'Hey, we're going to make something else.'”
The Energy Department estimates that hundreds of coal-fired power plants being retired or shut down across the country could be suitable sites for building new reactors because they already have power grids and running water, which it says could help coal-fired regions avoid big economic losses.
Future tasks
TerraPower in March submitted a 3,300-page application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission seeking permission to build the reactor, but the review process will take at least two years. The company must convince regulators that its sodium-cooled reactor does not require many of the expensive safety measures required for conventional light-water reactors.
“That's going to be difficult,” said Adam Stein, director of nuclear innovation at the Breakthrough Institute, a pro-nuclear research organization.
TerraPower's nuclear plants are designed so that key components like the power-generating steam turbines and molten-salt batteries are physically separated from the reactor where nuclear fission occurs, meaning those components don't need regulatory approval and construction can begin sooner, the company says.
A bigger obstacle may be sourcing fuel, as currently Russia is the only supplier of the specially enriched uranium that TerraPower uses. Congress has allocated $3.4 billion to shore up domestic fuel supplies, but that will take time.
The company has customers: PacifiCorp, which serves six Western states, plans to buy power from TerraPower's first reactor and has expressed interest in adding more. The company says any cost overruns will be borne by TerraPower, not ratepayers. But the deal has not yet been finalized, and some critics worry about the impact it could have on home electric bills.
“Nuclear has failed so many times, so I'm OK with people being skeptical of this,” Gates said. “A lot of things could go wrong or be delayed, but this is such an important project that I'm fundamentally supporting it financially. I see this as something that's completely different from other fission projects that are going on right now.”