TerraPower to build its first advanced nuclear reactor in a Wyoming coal town.
TerraPower, founded by Bill Gates, has picked Kemmerer, Wyoming, a frontier-era coal town, as the location for its first demonstration nuclear power plant. The facility will cost around $4 billion, with half coming from TerraPower and half from the US government, according to the business. The facility will be operated by Rocky Mountain Power, a branch of PacifiCorp, which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway Energy, and will play a role in the power company's decarbonization agenda.

TerraPower, a company innovated by Bill Gates to revise nuclear reactor designs, has picked Kemmerer, Wyoming, as the point for its first demonstration reactor. By 2028, it hopes to have the factory erected in the frontier-period coal city. The factory’s construction would produce jobs in Kemmerer, according to Terra Power CEO Chris Levesque in a video converse with journalists on Tuesday. It will also produce new clean-energy jobs in a region where the coal and gas industries dominate. A local power factory, a coal mine, and a natural gas processing plant now employ over 400 people, which is a significant number for a megacity of only people. Kemmerer Mayor William Thek told CNBC that” new industry coming to any city is generally good news.”You must remember that the utmost of our skirting communities is 50 country miles or further away from Kemmerer.”Despite this, workers in our neighborhood travel similar distances every day for work.”
TerraPower chose a point based on geological and technical variables such as seismic and soil conditions, as well as community support, according to Levesque.
The establishment will have a baseload capacity of 345 megawatts when completed, with the capacity to increase to 500 megawatts.
According to a rule of thumb suggested by Microsoft- founder Bill Gates in his new book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, “1 gigawatt, or megawatts, of energy, will run a midsize city, and a tiny townlet can operate on around 1 megawatt. He wrote that the United States uses gigawatts and that the globe requires gigawatts. The installation will cost around$ 4 billion to make, with TerraPower supplying half of the backing and the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program furnishing the other half.
“This is a significant government entitlement.”This was necessary, I should add, because the US government and nuclear assiduity were lagging, “Levesque explained.
“China and Russia are continuing to make new complexes using advanced technologies analogous to ours, intending to export those plants to numerous other countries,” Levesque added.”As a result, the US government was concerned that the US was not progressing in this direction.”
The Kemmerer complex will be the first to emplace TerraPower’s Natrium advanced nuclear design, which was developed in collaboration with GE-Hitachi. Instead of water, atrium plants employ liquid sodium as a cooling agent. Because sodium has a higher boiling point and can absorb further heat than water, high pressure inside the reactor does not build up, lowering the chance of an explosion.