Posted on June 13, 2024 by Jeremy Harrell and Jake Kincer
TerraPower broke ground on its Natrium reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming. This is the first time in four decades that a company has started construction on an advanced reactor in the United States. Natrium is a sodium fast reactor with integrated molten salt energy storage. This exciting 345 megawatt (MWe) reactor can ramp up to 500 MWe, enough to provide reliable, clean power to 400,000+ homes for more than five and a half hours.
TerraPower is building this first plant through a public-private partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP), a concept ClearPath started working on in 2016 in partnership with congressional leaders like U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Idaho National Lab, Oak Ridge National Lab, and DOE.
L to R: ClearPath’s Chris Tomassi (a Kemmerer, WY native), Jeremy Harrell and Jake Kincer at the groundbreaking
ClearPath has played a role over the past seven years in building bipartisan Congressional support for the U.S. DOE’s ARDP. We supported the Trump Administration’s efforts to launch the program and select cutting-edge projects like this, and continue to advocate the program’s importance. TerraPower will be putting clean electrons on the grid by the end of this decade. It is a true bipartisan win for American clean energy. Developing the next generation of nuclear technology now is essential as power demand from industrials and data centers is skyrocketing across America.
ARDP Timeline
For more information on this program, and the long road to get here, check our blog: It’s Happening… US to Build Two New Advanced Nuclear Reactors, from October 2020.
