Bill Gates brought the governors of Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming to the TerraPower nuclear facility he co-founded alongside Microsoft, where groundbreaking activity was already under way and the necessary permits and construction plans had been secured. On Thursday, governors and other political leaders were taken on a tour of the TerraPower construction site.
Built around alternative cooling and energy-storage methods, TerraPower's Natrium facility represents a departure from conventional reactor design toward what the company positions as a newer generation of nuclear generation. The TerraPower Natrium reactor operates on conventional fission principles, and a company representative described it as a technology that is both safe and environmentally clean, with unit costs expected to fall as more are constructed.
TerraPower's plant, once operational, is projected to reach a peak output of 500 megawatts — a volume of electricity sufficient to serve around 500,000 households. The company's chief executive, Chris Levesque, noted in a broadcast interview that the Natrium facility would draw on substantially lower water volumes than conventional nuclear reactors of the water-cooled variety in operation today. Salt figures into the facility's day-to-day processes as a functional input. Federal approval for TerraPower to break ground on its facility came through the U.S. Department of Energy.
Heavy equipment swept across the site, breaking up and levelling the terrain ahead of construction. State governors are examining nuclear energy 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 represented a long-anticipated development. Cox stated that he has been working to draw TerraPower into the state, noting in remarks to a news outlet that the company's reactor design operates without the water demands typical of older nuclear installations, and that fourth-generation technology represents a fundamentally different approach from the plants constructed during the mid-twentieth century. Gates told the same outlet that additional reactor locations across the region are under active consideration, with partnership announcements expected to take shape over the coming year.
Idaho Governor Brad Little described the facility as a product of private investment and Department of Energy collaboration operating on an accelerated timeline, adding that the three criteria guiding the project were safety, the ability to expand capacity over time, and cost accessibility. Little also raised the matter of nuclear security, noting that both incoming fuel supplies and spent fuel stockpiles would need to be protected from those who might seek to misuse them — remarks he offered alongside a broader statement of support for nuclear energy.
Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon noted that nearby communities had a voice in the siting process from the outset, with towns invited to put themselves forward as potential hosts, while also acknowledging that initial costs for nuclear power generation are projected to run high.
During Thursday's facility tour, Utah Senator John Curtis directed his questions at TerraPower executives toward the matter of nuclear waste disposal, asking what contingency arrangements the company held given that Congress would likely need to resolve long-term storage. An earlier remark noted that all parties had held reservations, though TerraPower had been able to meet with them and maintain those ongoing conversations. Levesque responded that spent nuclear fuel had a well-documented track record of safe storage within the United States.
TerraPower has stated that reprocessing spent nuclear fuel is not part of its plans, with Levesque noting that underground disposal remains the company's preferred path for handling used fuel. In a television interview after the exchange, Curtis said he and Utah residents still had questions to work through on the topic, and pointed out that people raised in his era tended to approach nuclear energy with wariness — a stance he described as having shifted considerably in the years since.
Several environmental organisations have raised questions about the financial and public-health costs tied to state-level nuclear energy expansion. Lexi Tuddenham, executive director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, asked on Thursday who would ultimately shoulder those expenses and which communities would absorb the effects of that power source — pointing to populations in areas that have lived under the health consequences of nuclear activity for generations. HEAL Utah is also taking part in an event this weekend in southeastern Utah focused on uranium mining's role in nuclear power generation.
Tuddenham voiced unease over nuclear waste disposal, pointing specifically to Utah officials' interest in accepting out-of-state waste, and argued that the industry has consistently fallen short of its commitments — a pattern she said justifies redirecting investment toward wind, solar, and geothermal energy.
Cox's office issued a statement describing the outcome as one that would serve the interests of consumers, utility ratepayers, and Utah residents. Under the proposed arrangement, the utility stood to absorb the asset into a broader regional transmission network spanning several neighbouring states.
Nuclear power holds a place in Utah's energy planning, with pilot work on small modular reactor technology among the avenues the state has moved to explore. TerraPower has projected that the Natrium plant will be producing electricity by 2031, provided its development timeline holds.
