Bill Gates-founded; Natrium sodium-cooled fast reactor under construction in Wyoming.
Editorial profile — compiled by us from public sources.
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The NRC issued a construction permit for TerraPower's Natrium plant (Kemmerer, Wyoming) — the first US commercial advanced-reactor approval in ~a decade and the first non-light-water reactor approval in over 40 years. 345 MWe sodium-cooled fast reactor with molten-salt storage boosting to 500 MW; completion targeted 2030.
Weeks after winning its NRC construction permit, TerraPower started safety-related construction on Kemmerer Unit 1 — on track to be the first utility-scale advanced (non-light-water) nuclear plant built in the US. The 345 MWe sodium-cooled fast reactor (molten-salt storage boosting to 500 MWe) will take ~1,600 workers and is targeted for completion by 2030; a January deal commits up to eight Natrium units to Meta by 2035. In September the lead contractor left: Bechtel, which had been TerraPower's engineering and construction partner since the project's start, filed a WARN notice on 15 Sep covering about 200 positions after the two companies were "unable to reach an agreement on the next phase of the project". TerraPower will rebid the EPC contract and says the schedule — construction complete in 2030, commercial operation in 2031 — is unchanged. A month earlier it had signed Hyundai E&C for up to eight later units, with price and completion guarantees; unit 1 has no such contractor today.
TerraPower's Natrium design was accepted into the UK's Generic Design Assessment, with the Office for Nuclear Regulation, the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales beginning Step 1 in June 2026 — the sodium-cooled fast reactor's first overseas licensing push, following its US construction permit at Kemmerer. The same 345 MWe design with molten-salt storage boosting to 500 MW.
