KEMMERER, Wyoming, Sept. 3 — The high desert town best known as a coal hub is now the staging ground for what TerraPower calls the first commercial-scale advanced nuclear project in the United States, as the Bill Gates-founded company rolls out a fresh wave of supplier contracts for its Natrium reactor technology.
The awards, disclosed in a company statement, span a dozen firms — from Merrick & Company, which picked up two contracts, to Mirion Technologies Inc, BWXT Canada Ltd, Teledyne Brown Engineering Inc, Marmen Inc, Thermal Engineering International (USA) Inc, Jensen Hughes, Boston Government Services LLC, James Fisher Technologies LLC, KROHNE Nuclear, and Valserve. The work supports construction of the flagship plant here in Kemmerer and the completion of a first-of-a-kind sodium test and fill facility being built on the same site.
TerraPower argues the supply-chain buildout is the critical path to hitting project milestones — and to positioning the U.S. manufacturing base for the wave of advanced nuclear deployment it expects to follow. Pat Young, senior vice president and Natrium project director, said each contract strengthens the network of qualified partners and helps lock in the milestones needed to bring the reactor to market. The Natrium design pairs a 345 MWe sodium-cooled fast reactor with a molten salt-based energy storage system.
That storage can temporarily push output to 500 MWe, letting the plant ride the daily swings in electric load and smooth over the intermittency of renewables on the grid. The technology is a joint development between TerraPower and GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy.
From coal country to clean power
TerraPower began non-nuclear construction at the Kemmerer site in June 2024 and expects the build to wrap up in 2030. The project is being developed through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. The company says it has already secured all long-lead items for the plant, including the entire reactor enclosure system.
The Wyoming project is just the opening move. TerraPower has an agreement with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to build up to eight Natrium plants by 2035.
Last month, the company signed agreements in Seoul with South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering & Construction and SK Innovation to develop and commercialize the technology across the United States, Korea, and select international markets — a follow-on to a trilateral memorandum of understanding signed in May between HD Hyundai, TerraPower, and HDEC.
What to watch
With the supplier roster now set and long-lead equipment secured, the next milestone is the completion of the sodium test and fill facility in Kemmerer — the step that validates the reactor’s cooling technology before the main plant comes online. The pace of that work, and whether TerraPower can hold its 2030 construction deadline, will signal how quickly the advanced nuclear pipeline the company is banking on can actually scale.
