Outside a small coal town in southwestern Wyoming, a multibillion-dollar effort to build America’s next-generation nuclear power plant is underway.
Workers began construction Tuesday on a new type of nuclear reactor that is smaller and cheaper than the old hulking reactors and is designed to produce electricity without the carbon dioxide that is rapidly warming the planet.
The reactors being built by TerraPower, for starters, won’t be completed until 2030 at the earliest and face tough hurdles. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has yet to approve the design, and the company must deal with the intractable delays and cost overruns that have plagued countless nuclear projects before.
What TerraPower does have, however, are influential and deep founders. Bill Gates, who is currently the seventh richest person in the world, has given more than $1 billion of his fortune to TerraPower, an amount he expects to increase.
“If you care about the climate, there are many, many locations around the world that should be nuclear,” Mr. Gates said in an interview near the project site on Monday. “I’m not joining TerraPower to make more money. I’m joining TerraPower because we need to build a lot of these reactors.
Mr. Gates, the former head of Microsoft, said he believes the best way to tackle climate change is through innovation that makes clean energy competitive with fossil fuels, a philosophy he describes in his 2021 book, “How to Avoid Climate Disaster.”
Nationwide, nuclear power is experiencing a resurgence, with several start-ups jockeying to build a wave of small reactors and the Biden administration offering generous tax credits for new plants.
Hopes for the TerraPower project are especially high among the 3,000 residents of the Wyoming towns of Kemmerer and Diamondville. For decades, the local economy has depended on coal-fired power plants and nearby mines. But the plant is slated to close in 2036 because the country no longer burns coal.
A new reactor, and the jobs that come with it, can offer a lifeline.
“When we talked a few years ago that we were losing coal mines and power plants, this was not a happy community,” said Mary Crosby, a Kemmerer resident and county grant writer. The reactor, he said, “provided an opportunity.”
At a recent conference in New York, David Crane, the Department of Energy’s infrastructure secretary, said that two years ago he “didn’t see” a case for next-generation reactors. But with demand for electricity rising due to data centres, factories and electric vehicles, Mr Crane said he was “very bullish” on nuclear to provide carbon-free power around the clock without requiring much land.
The challenge was building the plant, Mr. Crane said. “Nothing is going to be taken lightly.”
A new type of reactor
Mr Gates became interested in nuclear power in the early 2000s after scientists persuaded him that emission-free electricity was needed to combat global warming. He is skeptical that wind and solar power, which cannot run around the clock, will be enough.
“Wind and solar are really fantastic, and we need to build as fast as we can, but the idea that we don’t need anything beyond that is very unbelievable,” Mr. Gates said. How, he asked, would the houses of Chicago be heated during the long winter by wind or sun?
However, one problem with nuclear power is that it has become very expensive. Traditional reactors are huge, complex, tightly regulated projects that are difficult to build and finance. The only two American reactors built in the last 30 years, Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia, cost $35 billion, more than double the initial estimate, and came seven years behind schedule.
Mr. Gates is betting that a completely different technology will help. With TerraPower, he funded a team of hundreds of engineers to redesign a nuclear plant from scratch.
Today, every American nuclear plant uses light water reactors, where water is pumped into the reactor core and heated by atomic fission, producing steam to make electricity. Because the water is so pressurized, this plant needs heavy pipes and thick container shields to protect it from accidents.
The TerraPower reactor, by contrast, uses liquid sodium instead of water, allowing it to operate at lower pressures. In theory, that reduces the need for thick shielding. In an emergency, the plant can be cooled by air ventilation instead of a complicated pumping system. The reactor is only 345 megawatts, one-third the size of the Vogtle reactor, making it a smaller investment.
Chris Levesque, chief executive of TerraPower, said the reactor should produce electricity at half the cost of a traditional nuclear plant. “It’s an easier plant,” he said. “It gives us a safety benefit and a cost benefit.”
The TerraPower design has another unique feature. Most reactors cannot easily adjust their power output, making it difficult to connect with fluctuating wind and solar farms. The TerraPower reactor will have a molten salt battery that will allow the plant to ramp up or down as needed.
“That helps with the economy,” Mr. Levesque said. “We can store the energy and then sell it to the grid if it has a higher value.”
Still, it remains to be seen whether TerraPower can achieve lower costs. By 2022, the company estimates that the Kemmerer reactor will cost $4 billion, with the Department of Energy contributing up to $2 billion. These are already more expensive than modern gas or renewable plants, and costs could rise further.
The latest effort to build a nuclear plant has been plagued by delays and unexpected costs, said David Schlissel, director at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Last year in Idaho, NuScale, another startup, abandoned plans to build six small light water reactors after struggling with price increases.
“There is no evidence that these small reactors will be built faster or cheaper than larger ones,” Mr. Schlissel said, arguing that utilities should prioritize safer investments like wind, solar and batteries.
Mr. Gates acknowledged that TerraPower’s first plant may be expensive as the company goes through a learning curve. But, he said, they can absorb that financial risk in a way that utilities and regulators can’t. (In addition to Mr. Gates, TerraPower has raised $830 million from outside investors.)
The company says that if it can push through the initial hurdles and build multiple reactors, it can reduce costs to become economically competitive.
“We’re taking that risk, which, because we design, we feel very good,” Mr. Gates said. “But that means you need very deep pockets.”
Looking for a lifeline
At Kemmerer, officials are hopeful that the bet will pay off. This part of Wyoming has been dependent on coal, oil and gas since the first mines opened in 1887, but America’s coal consumption has halved over the last two decades.
The Naughton coal plant, south of town, dominated the sagebrush landscape and, at its peak, employed nearly 250 workers. When the utility that owns it, PacifiCorp, announced a few years ago that it would retire the facility, many wondered what might replace it. The closure has since been postponed until 2036.
In 2021, TerraPower decided that a nearby site would be suitable for a new reactor, as the company could reuse the coal plant’s transmission lines and retrain workers. The nuclear plant will employ 250 people and create 1,600 temporary construction jobs.
“Now I have people all over the country calling and saying, I want to be in that job,” said Jerry Payne, business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers Local 322, the union that represents many coal plant workers. “It means a lot to Kemmerer.”
After losing its residents for decades, Kemmerer is showing signs of revival. A new coffee shop, Fossil Fuel Coffee Co., and several businesses have opened downtown and two sprawling housing developments are planned on the outskirts.
Concerns about the project, especially the timeline. In 2022, TerraPower announced a two-year delay because it would no longer buy nuclear fuel from Russia and would have to find a new supplier.
“People keep asking, is this thing going to get built?” said Bill Thek, mayor of Kemmerer. “But now we see dirt moving, it’s energizing”
Last fall, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission held hearings in the city to field questions from some nervous residents. Does the regulator declare an earthquake? (Yes.) Is there a permanent place to store the plant’s radioactive waste? (Not yet.)
“There are people who are excited, and there are also people who are uncomfortable with the technology,” said Madonna Long, who was born in Kemmerer, left for several decades, and returned in 2020 to open a medical supply business. “But no one is knocking on the door and saying, ‘Hey, I’m going to build another one.’
The Department of Energy estimates that hundreds of retired or closed coal plants nationwide could be ideal locations for new reactors, as they already have grid connections and water supplies. Doing so, the agency said, could also help coal communities avoid drastic economic losses.
Challenges ahead
In March, TerraPower submitted a 3,300-page application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a permit to build the reactor, but it will take at least two years for it to be reviewed. Companies must persuade regulators that sodium-cooled reactors do not require many of the costly safeguards required for traditional light water reactors.
“It’s going to be a challenge,” said Adam Stein, director of nuclear innovation at the Breakthrough Institute, a pro-nuclear research organization.
The TerraPower plant is designed so that key components, such as the steam turbines that generate electricity and the molten salt batteries, are physically separate from the reactor, where fission takes place. The company said the part does not require regulatory approval and could be launched soon.
A bigger obstacle may be finding fuel, as Russia is currently the only supplier of the specially enriched uranium used by TerraPower. While Congress has appropriated $3.4 billion to increase domestic fuel supplies, it will take time.
The company has a customer: PacifiCorp, which provides power in six Western states, plans to buy electricity from TerraPower’s first reactor and has expressed interest in additional reactors after that. The utility says the cost of the overrun will be borne by TerraPower, not ratepayers. But the agreement is far from over, and some critics worry about the effect on household electricity bills.
“It’s OK for people to be skeptical about this, because nuclear has failed again and again,” Mr Gates said. “A lot of things could go wrong or delay us. But this is a very important project, so I have to keep it financially. I see it as very different from every other fission project we do.
