On the outskirts of a small mining town in southwestern Wyoming, a multibillion-dollar effort is underway to build the first of a new generation of American nuclear power plants.
Workers began construction on Tuesday a new type of nuclear reactor intended to be smaller and cheaper than the huge reactors of yesteryear and designed to produce electricity without the carbon dioxide that is rapidly warming the planet.
The reactor being built by startup TerraPower won’t be completed until 2030 at the earliest and faces huge hurdles. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not yet approved the design, and the company will have to overcome the inevitable delays and cost overruns that have doomed countless nuclear projects before.
What TerraPower does have, however, is an influential founder with lots of money. Bill Gates, currently ranked As the seventh richest person in the world, he has invested more than $1 billion of his fortune in TerraPower, an amount he hopes to increase.
“If you care about climate, there are many, many places around the world where nuclear power has to work,” Gates said during an interview near the project site on Monday. “I am not involved in TerraPower to make more money. “I’m involved in TerraPower because we need to build a lot of these reactors.”
Gates, the former head of Microsoft, said he believed the best way to solve climate change was through innovations that made clean energy competitive with fossil fuels, a philosophy he outlined in his 2021 book, “How to Avoid a Climate Change.” climate disaster.”
Nationally, nuclear energy is experiencing a resurgence of interest, with several startups racing to build a wave of smaller reactors and the Biden administration offering hefty tax credits for new plants.
Hopes for the TerraPower project are especially high among the 3,000 residents of the nearby Wyoming towns of Kemmerer and Diamondville. For decades, the local economy has depended on a coal-fired power plant and an adjacent mine. But that plant is scheduled to close in 2036, as the country stops burning coal.
A new reactor, and the jobs it brings, could offer a lifeline.