Questions About the Nuclear Plant in Kemmerer - Wyoming Deserves More Answers about Gates Project

by Wyoming Liberty Group

Bill Gates professes to know what's best for our state. Yes, that guy. The cofounder of tech giant Microsoft. By the way, being a billionaire doesn't necessarily make one wise. But in Gates' case, it does give him some serious currency in the cowboy state, where his company, TerraPower, is building a nuclear plant.

Gates launched the company in 2008 after he said he read a scientific paper on a "new type of nuclear power plant" years earlier. (Okay, he's a genius.) Recently, Gates visited Kemmerer to celebrate a major milestone in the project's construction.

"I'm thrilled to see so much economic growth happening, because Kemmerer will soon be home to the most advanced nuclear facility in the world," Gates wrote on his own blog. "I just left the groundbreaking ceremony for the first-ever Natrium plant, which will bring safe, next-generation nuclear technology to life right here in Wyoming. It's a huge milestone for the local economy, America's energy independence, and the fight against climate change.

He plans to build a lot of these nuclear plants.

Just what is this thing? Well, it's a nuclear power plant that uses liquid sodium. The plant, which has a price tag of $4 billion, is projected to begin operating in 2030. The Washington-based company's partner in the project is the U.S. Department of Energy, which will cover half the cost. Actually, that means us, the taxpayers. The federal agency calls it "first advanced nuclear project in the Western Hemisphere to move from design to construction."

The idea is for the nuclear plant to offer a new source for the growing demand for electricity but to do so without emitting carbon dioxide. The plant plans to do this by being smaller than traditional power plants and by cooling its reactor with liquid sodium rather than water. The plant expects to generate 345 megawatts of power, good enough to light up about 250,000 homes.

The Gates project is being built on a site near PacifiCorp's Naughton power plant, which is phasing out natural gas and coal over the next several years.

Did you get all of that? It's a lot. In fact, digging into this nuclear issue is a lot like falling down the proverbial rabbit hole, and be ready to read a lot of stuff, googling one thing to understand another, and then googling another thing to understand something else.

But we get this much: Gates' nuclear project is being touted for creating a lot of much needed jobs in southwest Wyoming.

Why did Gates pick us, here in the Kemmerer area a few years ago? According to AI—artificial intelligence—he picked it "because of the area's existing energy infrastructure and open space."

The company said it selected this location because of geological and technical factors as well as community support.

The purchased land was owned by PacifiCorp., a utility which, as it turns out, is part of another billionaire's portfolio. The utility is part of Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway.

Ah. Gates and Buffet are longtime buddies. And Buffet's utility has agreed to take over Gates' nuclear plant at some point and make it part of its utility service, which includes Wyoming's Rocky Mountain Power.

And yet. There are questions. For instance, some raise concern about the cost of such nuclear projects and how nuclear waste is stored (not easily, to put it mildly). But perhaps even more concerning is that advanced nuclear reactors use a complicated fuel, called high-assay low-enriched uranium, otherwise known as HALEU. Apparently, the Gates project was delayed by a couple of years because it turns out that the Russians happened to be the sole commercial source of that fuel at the time, and we're not exactly on great terms with the Russians.

And then there's this: The head of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists recently wrote an article that raises an even bigger question. He said that this fuel—HALEU—can be used for nuclear weapons, especially if it's produced in larger quantities to satisfy the needs of these newfangled nuclear plants. So, it doesn't take a James Bond imagination to see where this could be headed, if such fuel lands in the wrong hands.

Even Gates, in his own blog, raises some questions about the rise of such nuclear plants.

"While these first-of-a-kind projects can be big and risky, they are too important for our future to fail to act," he wrote. "I'm proud of all those who have helped ensure the most advanced nuclear project in the world gets built right here in the United States."

Wait. Did Gates just say "big and risky"? What are those risks that he refers to and how are they being addressed here in Wyoming?