Bill Gates — who built his name through Microsoft before turning his attention to nuclear energy via TerraPower — hosted the governors of Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming at the site where the reactor facility is under construction, noting that permitting and building documentation had already been secured. On Thursday, governors and other elected officials were taken on a walkthrough of the TerraPower construction site.
Built around alternative approaches to reactor cooling and energy storage, TerraPower's Natrium facility represents one direction the American nuclear industry is pursuing for its next phase of development. The plant is projected to reach a peak output of 500 megawatts — a capacity that company officials estimate would cover the electricity needs of around 500,000 homes — while its CEO, Chris Levesque, told a news outlet that the Natrium design draws on substantially less water than the water-cooled reactor technology that underpins most existing nuclear facilities. Salt figures into the facility's day-to-day operational processes.
With regulatory clearance from the Department of Energy now in hand, TerraPower can move forward with construction at its planned site. Heavy machinery — excavators and bulldozers among them — was operating across the site that Thursday, breaking ground ahead of subsequent construction work.
State governors have been examining nuclear power as a potential answer to electricity demand driven by population increases and the expansion of artificial intelligence. Utah Governor Spencer Cox expressed approval upon viewing a reactor pit under construction, noting that the visible progress marked a development his state had long anticipated. Idaho Governor Brad Little described the facility as a product of private investment and Department of Energy collaboration moving at an accelerated pace, one designed to meet standards of safety and scalability while remaining affordable — qualities he identified as the core requirements for the project to succeed.
Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon noted that local community input had been built into the project from the outset, explaining that towns were invited to put themselves forward as potential host sites rather than having locations chosen for them, while also acknowledging that initial costs for nuclear power generation are projected to run high.
During a Thursday tour of the TerraPower facility, Utah Senator John Curtis directed questions at company executives about what happens to spent nuclear fuel once the reactor has used it, asking what backup plans existed given that Congress had yet to resolve long-term storage. Levesque responded that the United States had already demonstrated spent fuel could be held in storage without posing a safety problem. TerraPower has no current plans to reprocess spent nuclear fuel, with Levesque noting that underground disposal remains the company's preferred approach for handling used material.
Following the exchange, Curtis told a television news outlet that he wanted answers on the matter, expressing that Utah residents shared his desire to better understand it — and that while nuclear energy once carried widespread public fear among his generation, attitudes toward it have shifted considerably since then.
Certain environmental organisations have raised questions about the financial and community costs tied to nuclear power expansion. Lexi Tuddenham, executive director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, asked on Thursday who would ultimately bear those costs, and pointed out that some communities have already spent decades living with the effects of being downwind from nuclear activity. HEAL Utah is taking part in a weekend gathering in southeastern Utah focused on opposition to uranium mining for nuclear power generation.
Tuddenham raised concerns about nuclear waste disposal, noting that Utah officials have expressed interest in accepting stored waste from other parts of the country. She described a pattern of the industry promising more than it delivers, while advocating for greater investment in wind, solar, and geothermal energy.
Little raised the matter of nuclear security, noting that both incoming fuel supplies and spent fuel stockpiles would be required to be protected against unauthorised access — remarks he offered alongside a broader statement of support for nuclear power.
TerraPower has indicated that the Natrium facility is on track to deliver power to the grid by 2031, provided the project's development unfolds as planned. PacifiCorp stood to acquire the asset for integration into its regional grid, extending coverage across neighbouring states. Nuclear power has taken on a growing role in Utah's broader energy planning, with pilot work around small modular reactor technology forming part of that push.
The TerraPower Natrium reactor operates on conventional fission principles, and a company representative described the technology as safe, clean, and expected to become more affordable as additional units are constructed. Cox stated that he has been working to bring TerraPower into the state, pointing to the company's water-use profile as a key draw — unlike conventional nuclear plants, he noted, TerraPower's design does not rely on water in the same way, and the generation-four technology now coming online represents a departure from the reactor models constructed during the mid-twentieth century. Cox described the outcome as one that serves the interests of consumers, ratepayers, and Utah residents alike.
In a separate exchange, Gates indicated that the region is being evaluated for additional reactor placements, with a number of new sites under consideration across the area. He added that coordinating the relevant partners over the coming year would likely produce formal announcements on those locations.
