Wyoming Authorizes Preliminary Construction of Small Nuclear Plant

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Bill Gates' TerraPower (Bellevue, Washington) this week received permission from a state agency to begin construction on the non-nuclear portions of a proposed small commercial nuclear power plant near Kemmerer, Wyoming. With the application for the advanced-model reactor in front of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the site has the potential to host the U.S.' newest nuclear power plant.

The Natrium reactor that TerraPower will use is an "advanced" reactor, cooled by sodium rather than the water seen in conventional reactors. It will have a normal generation capacity of 345 megawatts (MW) but will be able to reach 500 MW for short periods.

The Wyoming Industrial Siting Council (ISC) granted a construction permit to TerraPower for the non-nuclear portions of the plant. Construction of a sodium test and fill facility kicked off in June 2024, but the ISC permission paves the way to begin work on the actual plant. Non-nuclear portions of the plant include the energy island that will house the molten salt storage tanks and turbines.

Documents seeking authorization for TerraPower's Natrium reactor were submitted to the NRC in March 2024, and the company hopes to obtain permission for the reactor's implementation by December 2026. In addition to differing from conventional reactors by its sodium-cooled design, the reactor will be fueled by high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel, which is enriched to nearly 20% uranium-235, compared with the 5% seen in traditional reactors. In 2022, Russia's state-owned Tenex (Moscow) was the only supplier of HALEU in the world, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine led to TerraPower's severing relations with the company that year. According to WyoFile, the move pushed back TerraPower's planned start date of the reactor from 2028 to 2030 as the company began seeking alternate sources of HALEU from U.S. allies.

The Department of Energy (DOE) is at work on creating domestic production and a supply chain for HALEU. According to a 2023 Reuters article, the DOE estimated that the U.S. will need more than 40 million tons of HALEU for the new generation of reactors by the end of the decade. Two U.S. facilities can provide the uranium enrichment to HALEU levels, but not in quantities sufficient to keep TerraPower's plant operational.

In 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act allocated $700 million toward the development of a domestic HALEU supply chain, and a key HALEU supply contract was finalized with a subsidiary of Centrus Energy Corporation (Bethesda, Maryland). However, TerraPower says initially an appropriate amount of HALEU probably cannot be obtained from a single source and continues to work with the government in securing a reliable supply chain of the fuel.

When the non-nuclear portions of the plant are in place, TerraPower hopes to be able to more quickly construct the reactor and have the facility up and running in 2030. Should this happen, the plant would have the first advanced reactor in use in the U.S., as well as become Wyoming's first nuclear power plant.

The plant is being built near a retiring coal-fired station owned by PacifiCorp (Portland, Oregon), which is scheduled to stop burning coal at the site in 2026, although a natural gas-fired portion of the plant is expected to remain online for a decade after that. By building near existing infrastructure, TerraPower can take advantage of in-place transmission and distribution systems, and the 345 MW of nuclear power shouldn't tax the system of the 400-MW coal plant.

Subscribers to Industrial Info's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) Project Database can learn more by viewing the project report. TerraPower estimates the costs of the facility will be about $4 billion, some of which will be provided by government subsidies.

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