If Bill Gates can successfully build an advanced nuclear reactor at a retiring coal plant in Wyoming, it will validate how a new breed of carbon-free nuclear power can play a meaningful role in the transition to cleaner energy.
As developers of new reactors promise a smaller, cheaper, and safer alternative to financially struggling large nuclear plants, skeptics have questioned whether they can be counted on to fight a problem as urgent as climate change.
The first of these reactors are not expected to be on the market until late this decade.
But proponents say a new partnership announced this week by Gates’s TerraPower, utility PacifiCorp, and Republican leaders in Wyoming shows that small nuclear reactors can serve a unique role by creating a credible alternative for coal plants and their workers in a way that wind and solar can’t.
“A lot of fossil fuel-dependent communities are pushing back against the energy transition because they don’t see a future in it,” said Alex Gilbert, project manager of the Nuclear Innovation Alliance. “Advanced nuclear provides a vision for the future.”
The nuclear power industry and its supporters have long touted the ability of small reactors to be a cleaner replacement for coal.
While traditional large light-water reactors are too big to fit at a coal plant site (and too expensive to build), smaller versions can be a perfect fit, experts say.
Both coal and nuclear can provide around-the-clock electricity, unlike wind and solar, which are variable. The coal and nuclear industries offer some of the highest-paying jobs in the energy sector, and both industries are highly unionized (also unlike wind and solar). Jobs at coal and nuclear plants, such as boilermakers and electricians, are relatively similar, although some nuclear roles require additional training.
“The symbolism of it potentially displacing coal, a more carbon-intensive fuel, is important,” said Dan Brouillette, the Trump administration’s energy secretary. “We all know of the debate on the energy transition. Everyone understands it’s occurring. Nuclear power has to be part of this,” Brouillette told the Washington Examiner.
But TerraPower is the first to prove that a switch from coal to small nuclear reactors can work.
“This is really a unique way to demonstrate how new advanced nuclear reactors can provide different end uses and different value than just traditional large reactors,” said Niko McMurray, nuclear policy director at ClearPath, a conservative clean energy group.
TerraPower’s demonstration project will be located at one of PacifiCorp’s retiring coal-fired power plants, which the companies will announce by the end of this year.
At the Wyoming coal site, the company intends to build a 345 megawatt fully functioning nuclear power plant demonstrating its Natrium technology, which is unique in that it would store excess energy in tanks of molten salt to help supplement renewables in periods of high demand when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing.
Jeff Navin, director of external affairs for TerraPower, said the Natrium technology is particularly well suited to benefit Wyoming since the state is also adding massive amounts of wind as it moves off coal. According to the Energy Information Administration, wind power in Wyoming has more than doubled since 2009, and the state last year installed the third-largest amount of wind generating capacity.
“Natrium has this integrated storage system that allows it to elegantly operate on grids with high wind and solar,” Navin told the Washington Examiner. “Wyoming is adding a lot of wind, so this just makes a lot of sense.”
Citing a nuclear project at a coal plant also enables the reactors to link up with existing transmission lines and other infrastructure, reducing potential construction costs. Similarly, nuclear plants can use the same water source that a coal plant has used.
From the perspective of Wyoming’s political leaders, the nuclear industry has long been familiar, even though the state has no existing nuclear power capacity. Wyoming, the top coal-producing state in the country, is also America’s leader in the mining of uranium, the most widely used fuel for nuclear plants.
Republican state lawmakers, however, saw an opportunity in setting the stage for the development of small nuclear reactors in Wyoming.
Last year, the Legislature passed a law authorizing utilities to replace coal or natural gas generation with small nuclear reactors.
A provision of the legislation imposed a tax on electricity production from small nuclear units to provide a revenue source to help coal-dependent areas.
“That’s the price of doing business in Wyoming, but TerraPower still said it’s worth it because Wyoming is an attractive state to demonstrate new nuclear,” Gilbert said.
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, said when announcing his partnership with TerraPower that it would offer job opportunities for former coal plant workers employed by PacifiCorp, the utility.
Navin said the company is eyeing coal plants that have not yet closed but are scheduled to shut to “avoid a real disruption in those communities.”
He said building the nuclear plant would create between 2,000 and 3,000 temporary construction jobs, along with hundreds of permanent employment during operation.
The new jobs would also be employees of PacifiCorp, where the coal workers are generally unionized.
“We would anticipate many of those workers would transition to the new plant and remain with the same employer,” Navin said.
The Biden administration is also bullish on the potential of small nuclear reactors being built at coal plants as it looks to make the case that fossil fuel-dependent areas won’t be left behind as part of its aggressive clean energy push.
“The TerraPower Natrium project has tremendous opportunity to be a source of clean energy that makes use of a retiring coal plant to create good-paying clean energy jobs for union workers in the local Wyoming community,” Kathryn Huff, the acting assistant secretary for the Energy Department’s Office of Nuclear Energy, told the Washington Examiner.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who attended the announcement of the new project, said the Biden administration is committing to building more advanced nuclear reactors, which it sees as a critical part of its climate agenda. She suggested other coal-dependent states would soon come calling.
“I have a feeling Wyoming won’t be the only state angling for one of these nuclear reactors once we see it in action,” Granholm said.
