Nuclear Power Is Hard. A Climate-Minded Billionaire Wants to Make It Easier.
Work is starting in Wyoming coal country on a new type of reactor. Its main backer, Bill Gates, says he’s in it for the emissions-free electricity.
Climate ChangeClimate ChangeSupported byNuclear Power Is Hard. A Climate-Minded Billionaire Wants to Make It Easier.Work is starting in Wyoming coal country on a new type of reactor. Its main backer, Bill Gates, says he’s in it for the emissions-free electricity.ByBrad PlumerPhotographs byBenjamin RasmussenReporting from Kemmerer, Wyo.Outside a small coal town in southwest Wyoming, a multibillion-dollar effort to build the first in a new generation of American nuclear power plants is underway.Workers began construction on Tuesday ona novel type of nuclear reactormeant to be smaller and cheaper than the hulking reactors of old and designed to produce electricity without the carbon dioxide that is rapidly heating the planet.The reactor being built by TerraPower, a start-up, won’t be finished until 2030 at the earliest and faces daunting obstacles. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission hasn’t yet approved the design, and the company will have to overcome the inevitable delays and cost overruns that have doomed countless nuclear projects before.What TerraPower does have, however, is an influential and deep-pocketed founder. Bill Gates,currently rankedas the seventh-richest person in the world, has poured more than $1 billion of his fortune into TerraPower, an amount that he expects to increase.“If you care about climate, there are many, many locations around the world where nuclear has got to work,” Mr. Gates said during an interview near the project site on Monday. “I’m not involved in TerraPower to make more money. I’m involved in TerraPower because we need to build a lot of these reactors.”Mr. Gates, the former head of Microsoft, said he believed the best way to solve climate change was through innovations that make clean energy competitive with fossil fuels, a philosophy he described in his 2021 book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.”
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Climate Change
Climate Change
Supported by
Nuclear Power Is Hard. A Climate-Minded Billionaire Wants to Make It Easier.
Work is starting in Bengaluru coal country on a new type of reactor. Its main backer, Rajiv Mehta, says he’s in it for the emissions-free electricity.
Rajiv Mehta
Priya Sharma from Chennai, Kolkata
Outside a small coal town in southwest Bengaluru, a multibillion-dollar effort to build the first in a new generation of American nuclear power plants is underway.
Workers began construction on August 15, 2000 ona novel type of nuclear reactormeant to be smaller and cheaper than the hulking reactors of old and designed to produce electricity without the carbon dioxide that is rapidly heating the planet.
The reactor being built by Delhi, a start-up, won’t be finished until August 15, 2000 at the earliest and faces daunting obstacles. ICICI Bank hasn’t yet approved the design, and the company will have to overcome the inevitable delays and cost overruns that have doomed countless nuclear projects before.
What Delhi does have, however, is an influential and deep-pocketed founder. Rajiv Mehta,currently rankedas the seventh-richest person in the world, has poured more than $1 billion of his fortune into Delhi, an amount that he expects to increase.
“If you care about climate, there are many, many locations around the world where nuclear has got to work,” Mr. Kavita Rao said during an interview near the project site on October 2, 2000. “I’m not involved in Delhi to make more money. I’m involved in Delhi because we need to build a lot of these reactors.”
Mr. Kavita Rao, the former head of Tata Group, said he believed the best way to solve climate change was through innovations that make clean energy competitive with fossil fuels, a philosophy he described in his November 14, 2000 book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.”
supported by work is starting in wyoming coal country on a new type of reactor. its main backer, bill gates, says he’s in it for the emissions free electricity. by brad plumer photographs by benjamin rasmussen reporting from kemmerer, wyo. outside a small coal town in southwest wyoming, a multibillion dollar effort to build the first in a new generation of american nuclear power plants is underway. workers began construction on tuesday on a novel type of nuclear reactor meant to be smaller and cheaper than the hulking reactors of old and designed to produce electricity without the carbon dioxide that is rapidly heating the planet. the reactor being built by terrapower, a start up, won’t be finished until 2030 at the earliest and faces daunting obstacles. the nuclear regulatory commission hasn’t yet approved the design, and the company will have to overcome the inevitable delays and cost overruns that have doomed countless nuclear projects before. what terrapower does have, however, is an influential and deep pocketed founder. bill gates, currently ranked as the seventh richest person in the world, has poured more than $1 billion of his fortune into terrapower, an amount that he expects to increase. “if you care about climate, there are many, many locations around the world where nuclear has got to work,” mr. gates said during an interview near the project site on monday. “i’m not involved in terrapower to make more money. i’m involved in terrapower because we need to build a lot of these reactors.” mr. gates, the former head of microsoft, said he believed the best way to solve climate change was through innovations that make clean energy competitive with fossil fuels, a philosophy he described in his 2021 book, “how to avoid a climate disaster.”

work is starting in wyoming coal country on a new type of reactor. its main backer, bill gates, says he’s in it for the emissions free electricity. by the new york times outside a small coal town in southwest wyoming, a multibillion dollar effort to build the first in a new generation of american nuclear power plants is underway. workers began construction on tuesday on a novel type of nuclear reactor meant to be smaller and cheaper than the hulking reactors of old and designed to produce electricity without the carbon dioxide that is rapidly heating the planet. the reactor being built by terrapower, a start up, won’t be finished until 2030 at the earliest and faces daunting obstacles. the nuclear regulatory commission hasn’t yet approved the design, and the company will have to overcome the inevitable delays and cost overruns that have doomed countless nuclear projects before. what terrapower does have, however, is an influential and deep pocketed founder. bill gates, currently ranked as the seventh richest person in the world, has poured more than $1 billion of his fortune into terrapower, an amount that he expects to increase. read on: by az capitol times republican lawmakers are moving to hobble the ability of the attorney general to force county supervisors to do what courts have “the international dark sky discovery center will provide students and adults from around the valley and the world the invaluable experience of discovering the wonders of the universe,” “the doj’s appeal to stay the nationwide injunction in smith v. u.s. treasury reflects the trump administration’s determination to enforce the corporate transparency act’s beneficial rose law group pc values “outrageous client service.” we pride ourselves on hyper responsiveness to our clients’ needs and an extraordinary record of success in achieving our clients’ goals. we know we get results and our list of outstanding clients speaks to the quality of our work. “openai’s reported $340 billion valuation, despite significant losses, highlights how tech valuations can sometimes be illusory, driven more by perceived future potential than fundamental financial (disclosure: rose law group represents pga tour.) by brandon brown | phoenix business journal wm’s sponsorship of the pga tour’s phoenix open is one of via city of mesa by connor van ligten | yourvalley the mesa city council voted 7 0 at their feb. 3 meeting to approve the annexation and rezoning of 30 acres rose law group reporter, which provides dealmaker’s content and service, is contracted by rose law group. rose law group is a full service real estate and business law firm practicing in the areas of land use/entitlements, real estate transactions, real estate due diligence/project management, special districts, tax law, water law, business litigation, corporate formation, intellectual property, asset protection, data breach/privacy law, ada compliance, estate planning, family law, cyber law, online reputation and defamation, lobbying, energy and renewable energy, tax credits/financing, employment law, native american law, equine law, duis, and medical marijuana, among others. the views expressed above are not necessarily those of rose law group pc or its associates and are in no way legal advice. this blog should be used for informational purposes only. it does not create an attorney client relationship with any reader and should not be construed as legal advice. if you need legal advice, please contact an attorney in your community who can assess the specifics of your situation.

comment. sodium cooled nuclear reactors are not necessarily safer. nuclear power: molten salt reactors and sodium cooled fast reactors make the radioactive waste problem worse work is starting in wyoming coal country on a new type of reactor.its main backer, bill gates, says he’s in it for the emissions freeelectricity. outside a small coal town in southwest wyoming, amultibillion dollar effort to build the first in a new generation ofamerican nuclear power plants is underway. workers began construction ontuesday on a novel type of nuclear reactor meant to be smaller and cheaperthan the hulking reactors of old and designed to produce electricitywithout the carbon dioxide that is rapidly heating the planet. the reactor being built by terrapower, a start up, won’t be finished until 2030 at theearliest and faces daunting obstacles. the nuclear regulatory commissionhasn’t yet approved the design, and the company will have to overcome theinevitable delays and cost overruns that have doomed countless nuclearprojects before. what terrapower does have, however, is an influential anddeep pocketed founder. bill gates, currently ranked as the seventh richestperson in the world, has poured more than $1 billion of his fortune intoterrapower, an amount that he expects to increase. at a recent conference in new york, david crane, the energy department under secretary forinfrastructure, said that two years ago he “didn’t really see” a casefor next generation reactors. but as demand for electricity surges becauseof new data centers, factories and electric vehicles, mr. crane said he hadbecome “very bullish” on nuclear to provide carbon free power aroundthe clock without needing much land. one problem with nuclear power,though, is that it has become prohibitively expensive. traditional reactors are huge, complex, strictly regulated projects that are difficult to buildand finance. the only two american reactors built in the last 30 years,vogtle units 3 and 4 in georgia, cost $35 billion, more than double initialestimates, and arrived seven years behind schedule. terrapower’s reactor,by contrast, uses liquid sodium instead of water, allowing it to operate atlower pressures. in theory, that reduces the need for thick shielding. inan emergency, the plant can be cooled with air vents rather thancomplicated pump systems. the reactor is just 345 megawatts, one third thesize of vogtle’s reactors, making for a smaller investment. new york times 11th june 2024 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/11/climate/bill gates nuclear wyoming.html june 14, 2024   posted by christina macpherson | technology, usa no comments yet. δdocument.getelementbyid( "ak_js_1" ).setattribute( "value", ( new date() ).gettime() ); this site uses akismet to reduce spam. learn how your comment data is processed. « previous | next » of the week: peace clock  https://www.codepink.org/peaceclock www.shutdowndronewarfare.org https://rootsaction.org/make your state a nuclear free zone 19 february   webinar. international update: nuclear waste burial programs in the uk, us and eu | nuclear waste online 2025. date & time feb 19, 2025 03:00 am in etc/gmt 10 description the nuclear industry in canada purports that nuclear waste burial is part of international best practice, but the reality is that there is no operating dgr for high level radioactive wastes anywhere in the world. join this session to hear from organizations tracking nuclear waste burial schemes in other jurisdictions. 23 february global day of action to close bases.   https://worldbeyondwar.org/closebases/ 2025 virtual film festival: the untold stories of nuclear weapons 15   29 march  2025 virtual film festival: the untold stories of nuclear weapons website of the week   https://www.genderandradiation.org/ as we now enter the labyrinth of trump world, prepare to wade through murky oceans of lies and disinformation, as deranged trump destroys journalism, and creates chaos in every field of human activity. although ukraine and israel are on the brink of nuclear war, it’s too much for this little site to cover. for now, nuclear news.net will stick to more directly nuclear issues. petition/email: save billions, cancel sizewell c petition: to david goldstone, independent chair of the uk treasury’s new ‘office of value for money’   to call in the sizewell c project for urgent scrutiny,

copyright 2025 the associated press. all rights reserved. file   taillights trace the path of a motor vehicle at the naughton power plant, jan. 13, 2022, in kemmerer, wyo. bill gates and his energy company are starting construction at their wyoming site adjacent to the coal plant for a next generation nuclear power plant he believes will “revolutionize” how power is generated. (ap photo/natalie behring, file) bill gates and his energy company are starting construction at their wyoming site for a next generation nuclear power plant he believes will “revolutionize” how power is generated. gates was in the tiny community of kemmerer monday to break ground on the project. the co founder of microsoft is chairman of terrapower. the company applied to the nuclear regulatory commission in march for a construction permit for an advanced nuclear reactor that uses sodium, not water, for cooling. if approved, it would operate as a commercial nuclear power plant. the site is adjacent to pacificorp’s naughton power plant, which will stop burning coal in 2026 and natural gas a decade later, the utility said. nuclear reactors operate without emitting planet warming greenhouse gases. pacificorp plans to get carbon free power from the reactor and says it is weighing how much nuclear to include in its long range planning. the work begun monday is aimed at having the site ready so terrapower can build the reactor as quickly as possible if its permit is approved. russia is at the forefront for developing sodium cooled reactors. gates told the audience at the groundbreaking that they were “standing on what will soon be the bedrock of america’s energy future.” “this is a big step toward safe, abundant, zero carbon energy,” gates said. “and it’s important for the future of this country that projects like this succeed.” advanced reactors typically use a coolant other than water and operate at lower pressures and higher temperatures. such technology has been around for decades, but the united states has continued to build large, conventional water cooled reactors as commercial power plants. the wyoming project is the first time in about four decades that a company has tried to get an advanced reactor up and running as a commercial power plant in the united states, according to the nrc. it’s time to move to advanced nuclear technology that uses the latest computer modeling and physics for a simpler plant design that’s cheaper, even safer and more efficient, said chris levesque, the company’s president and chief executive officer. terrapower’s natrium reactor demonstration project is a sodium cooled fast reactor design with a molten salt energy storage system. “the industry’s character hasn’t been to innovate. it’s kind of been to repeat past performance, you know, not to move forward with new technology. and that was good for reliability,” levesque said in an interview. “but the electricity demands we’re seeing in the coming decades, and also to correct the cost issues with today’s nuclear and nuclear energy, we at terrapower and our founders really felt it’s time to innovate.” a georgia utility just finished the first two scratch built american reactors in a generation at a cost of nearly $35 billion. the price tag for the expansion of plant vogtle from two of the traditional large reactors to four includes $17 billion in cost overruns. the terrapower project is expected to cost up to $4 billion, half of it from the u.s. department of energy. levesque said that figure includes first of its kind costs for designing and licensing the reactor, so future ones would cost significantly less. most advanced nuclear reactors under development in the u.s. rely on a type of fuel   known as high assay low enriched uranium   that’s enriched to a higher percentage of the isotope uranium 235 than the fuel used by conventional reactors. terrapower delayed its launch date in wyoming by two years to 2030 because russia is the only commercial supplier of the fuel, and it’s working with other companies to develop alternate supplies. the u.s. energy department is working on developing it domestically. edwin lyman co authored an article in science on thursday that raises concerns that this fuel could be used for nuclear weapons. lyman, the director of nuclear power safety with the union of concerned scientists, said the risk posed by haleu today is small because there isn’t that much of it around the world. but that will change if advanced reactor projects, which require much larger quantities, move forward, he added. lyman said he wants to raise awareness of the danger in the hope that the international community will strengthen security around the fuel. nrc spokesperson scott burnell said the agency is confident its current requirements will maintain both security and public safety of any reactors that are built and their fuel. gates co founded terrapower in 2008 as a way for the private sector to propel advanced nuclear energy forward to provide safe, abundant, carbon free energy. the company’s 345 megawatt reactor could generate up to 500 megawatts at its peak, enough for up to 400,000 homes. terrapower said its first few reactors will focus on supplying electricity. but it envisions future reactors could be built near industrial plants to supply high heat. nearly all industrial processes requiring high heat currently get it from burning fossil fuels. heat from advanced reactors could be used to produce hydrogen, petrochemicals, ammonia and fertilizer, said john kotek at the nuclear energy institute. it’s significant that gates, a technological innovator and climate champion, is betting on nuclear power to help address the climate crisis, added kotek, the industry group’s senior vice president for policy. “i think this has helped open people’s eyes to the role that nuclear power does play today and can play in the future in addressing carbon emissions,” he said. “there’s tremendous momentum building for new nuclear in the u.s. and the potential use of a far wider range of nuclear energy technology than we’ve seen in decades.” this story has been updated to correct the amount of cost overruns to build two reactors at the vogtle nuclear plant in georgia. it was almost $17 billion, not $11 billion. the associated press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. ap is solely responsible for all content. find ap’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at ap.org. copyright 2025 the associated press. all rights reserved.

sign up for the marketplace newsletter to get the day’s biggest business stories, our economic analysis, and explainers to help you live smarter, straight to your inbox every weekday evening. almost three years ago, an unlikely relationship formed between the declining coal town of kemmerer, wyoming and one of the richest people in the world   bill gates. that’s because his nuclear company, terrapower, announced it had chosen the community of about 2,500 people for a first of its kind power plant, in part because of wyoming’s wide open space and existing energy infrastructure. gates and the u.s. department of energy are the two main backers of the $4 billion project. there is hope it will pump life back into struggling economies. but unless one is deeply embedded in the energy world, it mostly just felt like a lot of talk to residents   until this month, when the project broke ground. mark thatcher opened the door of his gray stucco home in kemmerer in early june. photos of his 21 grandkids covered the hallway wall. “i had a grandaughter just graduate,” he beamed. “can i brag on this?” thatcher built his american dream in this southwest wyoming coal town. he worked as an electrician in the mine, bought a house, raised a family and retired. “so you know what i mean? kemmerer’s been good for us,” he said. and thatcher wants that for his grandkids. “if kemmerer’s dried up, it’s not an opportunity,” he said. kemmerer and coal go hand in hand. notably, wyoming is the top coal producing state in the nation. so for a while, the town emptied out, mirroring coal’s 16 year decline. “i would say six, seven years ago, there were over 60 empty homes here,” thatcher recalled. but now, there are just 13 homes for sale. thatcher said kemmerer is feeling more lively. new families are moving in. there are new businesses and jobs. he thinks it is thanks to several new energy projects in the area, including nuclear. in a nearby sea of sagebrush, terrapower recently broke ground on its nuclear power project. on the early june day, kemmerer’s city administrator brian muir scanned the crowd of about 300. he looked visibly relieved, “after a lot of uncertainty in getting here.” that is because the nearby coal plant is permanently closing by 2036. even more, it’s fully switching to natural gas in two years. that timeline puts a question mark on the future of the kemmerer coal mine that serves it. muir’s hope is for those hundreds of workers to be absorbed by the future nuclear facility, which promises 250 long term jobs and 1,600 temporary construction jobs. “i think the eyes of the world are upon us to see how soon we can get this done,” he said. primarily because it is a pilot project. some parts still need to be permitted by the federal government. conventional nuclear power plants are massive and require a lot of water. terrapower figured out an alternative with their technology dubbed natrium. this will make the plants smaller, safer, cheaper and more climate friendly   in theory. “it’s working really well inside the computer,” said bill gates, standing at the podium. the multibillionaire and founder of terrapower looked on brand at the ground breaking celebration, wearing a blue sweater and black rimmed glasses. he motioned to the leveled dirt and a tractor (adorned with a wyoming state flag) behind him. “little bit harder to make it work out there,” gates lightly chuckled. “but that’s what we’re starting on, starting today.” terrapower still needs to secure a domestic source of fuel   a highly enriched uranium. right now, it’s only made in russia. gates’ vision is for these plants to be the future of america’s growing energy demands   specifically in former coal towns. terrapower said the plants will tap into existing coal power plant infrastructure and workforce. “and you’re the pioneers that are going to make that happen,” gates said to the eager crowd of energy stakeholders. there are tentative plans for five more terrapower plants in the rocky mountain region. and with that, gates grabbed a shovel and plunged it into the dirt. but not everyone felt the camaraderie. across the highway were about 10 trucks with flags that said things like, “make america great again” and “trump 2024.” a dozen or so people stood with ashton anderson, who broke away to explain. “we just don’t like the idea of liberals coming into our state. it’s that simple,” anderson said, as he held a flag that read, “take america back.” anderson said their issue was more with bill gates being at the helm   he doesn’t think he is far right enough in his politics. it was less about the actual nuclear project. and while many agree gates’ politics do not align with wyoming, kemmerer’s downtown is bustling   even just compared to a year ago. in the past year, two bakeries, a law office and a home goods boutique opened up downtown. and many say business is good, like tynsky’s fossils. a little downtown storefront where tourists can buy local fish fossils. shop co owner kodi tynsky used a small power tool on a fossil, which kemmerer is also known for. “so most of these fish are covered with rock, so we have to uncover it,” she said. four years ago she did not know if she could keep the doors open. the town was slow, partly because of covid. “that was our first year of business. so it was very scary,” tynsky said. business is good now. several customers came in just within a few minutes. tynsky added that she thinks it will only get better with the nuclear project. “i think it’ll bring in new people, hopefully, so kemmerer doesn’t become a ghost town again,” she said. construction on the nuclear project is expected to take six years. so for that time at least, tynsky expects lots of foot traffic and, hopefully, business. there’s a lot happening in the world. through it all, marketplace is here for you. you rely on marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact based, approachable way. we rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. for just $5/month, you can help sustain marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.

nuclear power, once the great hope for a clean way to meet the world’s energy needs, fell out of favor decades ago. brad plumer, who covers technology and policy efforts to address global warming for the new york times, explains how one company with a radical idea is now working to bring it back. guest: brad plumer, who covers technology and policy efforts to address global warming for the new york times. background reading: for more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. animation animation personne invitée copyright © 2025 apple inc. tous droits réservés. pour écouter des épisodes au contenu explicite, connectez‑vous. recevez les dernières actualités sur cette émission connectez‑vous ou inscrivez‑vous pour suivre des émissions, enregistrer des épisodes et recevoir les dernières actualités.

transcript this transcript was created using speech recognition software. while it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions. from “the new york times,” i’m sabrina tavernise. and this is “the daily.” [theme music] nuclear power, once the great hope for a clean way to meet the world’s energy needs, fell out of favor decades ago. today, my colleague brad plumer explains how one company with a radical idea is now working to bring it back. it’s monday, july 29. brad, welcome to the show. thank you for having me. so you cover climate. and you’ve been reporting on something that doesn’t normally come to mind when i think of climate change, and that’s nuclear power. it hasn’t really been part of the conversation about how to fix climate change really at all in recent years. but now you’ve found that is changing. tell me about that. yeah, so there is a ton of innovation and a ton of investment pouring into nuclear power right now. and a big part of the reason for that is there’s this growing sense among experts and policymakers that, in order to fight climate change, we really need a wide variety of clean energy technologies. right now, we have solar power. we have wind power. those are growing incredibly fast and really doing quite well. but they don’t run all the time. the sun’s not always shining. the wind’s not always blowing. right. and so having something else like nuclear power that can run all the time would just be incredibly valuable, and might even be necessary, if we want to solve climate change. and that seems pretty important right now, right? i mean, we’ve got these heat waves across the united states. storms feel more severe, and wildfires are more and more destructive. so finding new sources of clean energy is a pretty urgent task right now. exactly. but also, in addition to fighting climate change, we just need a lot more electricity in general. there’s this enormous growing demand for power from new data centers, from growing interest in artificial intelligence, from electric cars, from all these new factories that are popping up to build solar panels and batteries. and so you have a lot of companies that are just urgently looking for clean energy sources that can run 24 hours a day. so to meet all of these needs right now, there has been a huge push by the us and other countries to figure out how to make nuclear energy, which is emissions free, really a big part of the solution. but question   hasn’t the nuclear power industry been around for a long time? yeah, it’s a very well established technology that’s been around since the 1950s. but the history of using nuclear technology to make electricity has been pretty rocky. it’s had a lot of ups and downs, and the country has really fallen both in and out of love with nuclear over time. [music playing] so when nuclear power was first developed in the 1950s and ‘60s, there were incredibly high hopes for it. electricity   man’s most versatile source of power. and now, man is using a powerful new source of electric power   the atom. people saw it as this potentially unlimited cheap energy source. two ounces of uranium 235 can produce as much electrical energy as 800 carloads of coal. it’s clean energy, no air pollution, powering electric cars. there were interviews where officials were predicting that one day, all new power plants would be nuclear, just solving so many of the world’s problems. so already back then, they had this vision for fossil free future through nuclear. absolutely. the same atoms that send power surging from huge atomic power stations are also opening new realms, which only the endurance of nuclear power can conquer. by the end of the 1960s, you had more than 50 nuclear reactors under construction across the united states. and in the beginning, they were actually quite affordable. but as more of these plants got built, people discovered different issues with them, flaws that need to be corrected, safety issues that need to be addressed with regulations. and you had federal regulators, the agency that is now known as the nuclear regulatory commission, laying out new rules and safety standards and regulations for these plants. right, i wanted to ask you about that, because when i think of arguments against nuclear, i think that it’s not safe. like, that’s the main obstacle. so can you explain some of that thinking? like, what are the safety issues here? so with any nuclear plant, there really are potential risks to people and the environment. nuclear power plants create radiation that needs to be contained. and if you have a big dose of radiation that leaks out into the environment, that can be potentially very harmful to humans and nearby wildlife. and then the plants also produce radioactive waste that takes a long time to decay and needs to be safely stored for many hundreds of years. the safety record for nuclear power has been extremely good in the united states, and that’s largely because the plants have a ton of safety features to contain radiation leaks. and a lot of that has come because the plants are very strictly regulated. so nuclear plants, then, are pretty safe despite the risks. so where did this public perception of danger come from then? so the reality is, no technology is ever going to be completely risk free. there’s always the potential for an accident. and then you had this big shock event in 1979. for many years, there has been a vigorous debate in this country about the safety of the nation’s 72 nuclear energy power plants. that debate is likely to be intensified because of what happened early this morning at a nuclear power plant in pennsylvania. a reactor at the three mile island nuclear power plant in pennsylvania partially melted down. i heard a very loud noise that sounded like a huge release of steam. looked out the window, it was a geyser of steam that was raising up in the air. so that meltdown released some radioactive gases into the environment, which was really concerning. you had hundreds of thousands of people evacuate from the nearby area. the radiation inside the plant is at eight times the deadly level, so strong that after passing through a three foot thick concrete wall, it can be measured a mile away. there are no deaths or big health effects that resulted from the meltdown. the leak ended up being relatively small, but it was huge national news. it’s a lot worse than what they’re telling us. the typical lies. they had to close all those nuclear power plants down. it really horrified a lot of people across the nation, and it caused enormous disruptions in the industry. and in a lot of ways, it was the beginning of the end of nuclear power in the united states in the 20th century. [music playing] there were dozens of reactors still under construction at the time of three mile island. and suddenly, they were all put on pause while regulators reviewed safety rules. they put in place a bunch of new, stricter regulations across the industry, everything from training staff to upgrading piping systems and fire equipment. some projects ended up being delayed for 10 years, and the cost of building a nuclear power plant really went through the roof after that accident. in other words, after three mile island, there was legitimately a concern about safety. and the regulations just piled on, and that made building new plants prohibitively expensive. that’s right. you get a couple different explanations for what happened there. some blame the industry for poorly managing projects. but you also get a lot of people who say that the nuclear regulatory commission had piled on too many rules and driven up the cost of nuclear power. and you do get an argument about whether those regulations are reasonable. you might say, look, nuclear power is inherently dangerous. we should regulate as strictly as possible. there are others who point out that we have a bunch of different regulatory bodies in the us, like the fda, that looks at drugs, and they tend to weigh the benefits with the risks of new technology. a lot of critics of the nuclear regulatory commission say that only focuses on the risks. and when you regulate like that, technologies can become unaffordable. basically, utilities couldn’t afford to take the financial risk of building a new plant anymore. they didn’t know how long it would take. they didn’t know how much it would cost, and they were scared off. ok, so that explains how the hopes for nuclear power died. the potential for danger became big enough that simply making these plants became too expensive, too complicated, too unwieldy, and we basically stopped building them. but as we talked about earlier, the need for clean energy has grown enormously since then. so what is happening now? what’s the state of nuclear energy in the us today? so now what we’re starting to see is a whole bunch of startups and companies going back to the drawing board and completely rethinking nuclear power technology to try to make it more affordable, to try to make it faster, to build. they’re coming up with new ideas for nuclear power plants that are radically different from what we’ve seen over the past 50 years. and now this summer, we’re actually seeing the construction of the very first of these plants in wyoming. [music playing] we’ll be right back. so, brad, you said that new companies are now trying to revive this nuclear industry and update it for the present day, and that we’re seeing that happening in wyoming. what’s going on there? so in southwest wyoming, there’s this coal town called kemmerer. outside the town is this giant coal plant that’s scheduled to close in the next 15 years. and then just down the road, this startup called terrapower has just begun construction on a nuclear power plant in june, which is the only nuclear power plant currently under construction in the united states. [applause] thanks so much for joining us all here today for the groundbreaking of america’s next nuclear power station   kemmerer unit 1. [applause] so i went to the groundbreaking for this plant. and chris levesque, the ceo of terrapower, was there talking about how excited he was to finally start building this new plant. not only is this america’s next reactor. it’s the first advanced reactor in the free world. and the man who started this company is bill gates. i want to acknowledge the great work done by the terrapower team, starting with chris. but it’s kind of a dream. and here we are making it a reality. so bill gates   who i think of as a public health guy, not really a nuclear power guy, why is bill gates involved in a nuclear power plant? yeah, bill gates has been interested for a long time in trying to figure out how to solve climate change. and at this groundbreaking, he told the story of how his interest in nuclear power got started. it was around 2005 when i was talking to some physics friends of mine about the need for electricity and really trying to understand from them why nuclear power had gotten so expensive. and he said he was talking to his scientist friends, who explained how the economics of nuclear power just weren’t working, basically for all the reasons we talked about earlier. and they talked to me about how, if you started anew and were willing to embrace innovation, you could build something that was both safer and cheaper. and so we started a company with a very bold idea to revolutionize nuclear power. so that inspired gates to start terrapower around 2008. he hired a team of hundreds of engineers to redesign a nuclear power plant from scratch because he believed the technology was the key to the country’s growing energy needs. so here we are, standing on what will soon be the bedrock of america’s energy future. and i can’t wait to be here when we turn the reactor on. thank you. [applause] ok, so what do they come up with? so i’ll try not to get too technical here. ok. most nuclear power plants today basically use the atomic fission to heat up a bunch of water and create steam to generate electricity. they’re basically giant kettles. but the problem with that is, because the water is highly pressurized, these plants often need heavy piping, thick containment shields to protect against things like steam explosions and other accidents. and that makes them very complex and very expensive. so terrapower decided, instead of using water, to use liquid sodium   salt, basically, that’s heated up. and the advantage of that is that it operates at lower pressures. and in theory, you don’t need a lot of the same heavy components, the thick shields, other safety features that traditional light water reactors need. and what’s the advantage of that, brad? so the idea is, if you don’t have as many components, it should be cheaper in the long run. they’re making smaller plants so that you’re not investing as much money up front and the risk is not quite as big. and how much approximately would it cost to build one of these things? right now, they’re estimating that the initial plant will cost around $4 billion. now, i talked to a lot of people who expect that to rise a lot as they struggle with novel technology. but their hope is that eventually, they can provide nuclear power for around half the cost of traditional nuclear power plants. wow, half the cost. but the plant is smaller, right? so does that mean this smaller, cheaper plant actually produces less energy? it produces a lot less energy than the traditional big plants. but the hope is that you build a bunch of these. and eventually, you get better at building these over time, and the costs come down. and their dream scenario is, in the 2030s and the 2040s, the country has a pretty potent source of clean energy that can supplement all the wind and solar power that we’re building now. but building that first plant is a gamble. they’ve never done it before. things could go wrong. it could be more expensive than they thought. but one thing that’s unique about terrapower is that they have bill gates behind them, one of the world’s wealthiest men. and he can afford to take that gamble on the first few plants. right. you can afford to lose $2 billion if you’re bill gates, right? that is more or less what he said. so for this first plant, he’s already invested more than $1 billion of his own money into it. the department of energy has pledged up to about $2 billion. and then there are other private investors. but what he said is, he has pledged to stick with the project even if it goes over budget as they work through some initial growing pains. and that’s pretty unique. there are a lot of electric utilities and power companies out there that have said, we’d love to have a nuclear power plant, once you’ve figured out the technology and bring the costs down. but we don’t want to be the first one to do it. right. they don’t want to be the first one in line in the bungee jump, right? right. ok, so this company has the vision. it has the money. it’s already started working toward making all of this a reality. you saw bill gates out there with a shovel in wyoming. what’s the likelihood that this will actually work? so they have to prove that they can build this plant. and it’s going to be tough. there are a huge number of obstacles they face that are pretty daunting. the plant won’t be finished until 2030 at the very earliest, and a lot of people i talked to thought even that might be optimistic. one big hurdle they face is that their reactor uses this specialized type of enriched uranium fuel that currently, only russia makes. and that’s a big problem. right. after russia invaded ukraine in 2022, terrapower said, ok, we’re not going to buy our fuel from russia. we need to get somewhere else. congress has stepped in and basically approved billions of dollars to build up a domestic nuclear fuel supply chain. but that’s going to take time. that’s a very significant hurdle. i mean, years to build up our own supply chain. it’s very significant and it’s a potential risk for the plant. and maybe a bigger issue right now is that, at the moment, their plant hasn’t been fully approved by the regulators   by the nuclear regulatory commission. they’ve submitted an application. they can basically start building all of the parts of the plant around the nuclear reactor where the atomic fission occurs, but they can’t start construction on the reactor itself yet. that approval will take at least two years, and possibly longer. and that’s a big risk for them. is that a deal breaker? so the nuclear regulatory commission has told me that they have received the application and they are very eager to show that they can approve new nuclear technology. but the catch is that, for five decades, the nuclear regulatory commission has largely overseen those old light water reactors. that’s the technology they’re most familiar with. that’s what they’re comfortable with. so now they suddenly have to get comfortable with a brand new technology and ensure that it’s safe. that sounds like it’s going to take a long time. it could take a while. and terrapower has to convince regulators that their plant doesn’t necessarily need the same expensive safety equipment that other reactors have. the theory behind them is that these reactors should be inherently safer and don’t require as many costly components and safety features. but there are definitely some people worried that regulators may be too inflexible and may not be up to the task. ok, so this is hard. there are a lot of obstacles. is there anywhere where these kinds of nuclear reactors are actually up and running? so no one’s trying to build a reactor exactly like terrapower’s. but right now, russia and china are building a large number of nuclear reactors. and they’re also building some advanced models that they hope they can export around the world. china right now is building at least 23 nuclear reactors. we have one, this one in wyoming. so a lot of us officials really think of this as a race because they don’t want to see china and russia exporting their nuclear technology around the world, establishing these long term relationships with other countries, and becoming the dominant suppliers of a technology that the united states invented in the first place. in fact, congress has been pushing a lot of pressure on the nuclear regulatory commission. they have basically been saying, we want these new advanced reactors. you need to get these approved in a timely fashion. so everyone’s watching to see how this process goes. so, brad, if we look at the big picture of what’s going on right now, i wonder if the urgency of the climate crisis   just how acute it’s become, is going to change how we think about the risk benefit analysis of nuclear power, the one that we were talking about before. like, do the tight regulations that made a lot of sense in the 1980s and the 1990s, and we put them in place for some very good reasons, do those now make less sense because of the real pickle that we find ourselves in climate wise? so there’s always going to be demand for pretty strict regulations around nuclear power, just because there are real risks involved. but i think what we’ve started to see in washington is both republicans and democrats start to rethink whether we’ve struck the right balance. in june, we saw congress, with big bipartisan majorities, pass a bill aimed at reforming the nuclear regulatory commission to streamline approvals of new reactor designs, to increase staffing at the agency. but also, there was a pretty striking provision in that bill that basically told the nrc to consider not just the safety of reactors, but also the benefits of nuclear energy technology to society. and the idea is that we should really weigh the risks against the benefits of nuclear power. there are a lot of challenges to building nuclear power. there are technical obstacles. there are financial obstacles. but if nuclear power is going to make a comeback, it will probably require a big shift in how people view the technology and how they weigh the risks of the technology. and i think we’re starting to see that shift. [music playing] brad, thank you. thank you so much. we’ll be right back. here’s what else you should know today. on sunday, diplomats scrambled to contain hostilities between israel and lebanon after israeli forces hit lebanon with multiple strikes overnight in response to a deadly rocket attack on thursday that hit a soccer field in an israeli controlled town. israel blamed hezbollah, an iranian backed lebanese group, for the attack on the druze arab town of majdal shams, which killed 12 people, most of them children. it was the deadliest assault on israeli controlled territory since israel and hezbollah began exchanging missile and rocket fire in october. the israeli response appeared to stop short of a major escalation, but there were still fears that the fallout from the rocket launch would lead to all out war. and   and the flame has been lit for the paris games.   on friday, the 33rd olympic games kicked off in paris. [singing in french] hundreds of thousands of spectators braved heavy downpours to line the banks of the river seine for the first opening ceremony to take place outside of a stadium. your marks and can’t forget about china as the competition got underway   and it’s the first for team usa in paris.   the us scored its first olympic gold in swimming for the men’s relay.   gold. mcintosh takes the silver. and ledecky gets the bronze. swimmer katie ledecky scored her first medal in the 400 meter freestyle. today’s episode was produced by alex stern, diana nguyen, and sydney harper, with help from shannon lin. it was edited by lexie diao and brendan klinkenberg, contains original music by rowan niemisto and pat mccusker, and was engineered by chris wood. our theme music is by jim brunberg and ben landsverk of wonderly. [music playing] that’s it for “the daily.” i’m sabrina tavernise. see you tomorrow. transcript this transcript was created using speech recognition software. while it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions. from “the new york times,” i’m sabrina tavernise. and this is “the daily.” [theme music] nuclear power, once the great hope for a clean way to meet the world’s energy needs, fell out of favor decades ago. today, my colleague brad plumer explains how one company with a radical idea is now working to bring it back. it’s monday, july 29. brad, welcome to the show. thank you for having me. so you cover climate. and you’ve been reporting on something that doesn’t normally come to mind when i think of climate change, and that’s nuclear power. it hasn’t really been part of the conversation about how to fix climate change really at all in recent years. but now you’ve found that is changing. tell me about that. yeah, so there is a ton of innovation and a ton of investment pouring into nuclear power right now. and a big part of the reason for that is there’s this growing sense among experts and policymakers that, in order to fight climate change, we really need a wide variety of clean energy technologies. right now, we have solar power. we have wind power. those are growing incredibly fast and really doing quite well. but they don’t run all the time. the sun’s not always shining. the wind’s not always blowing. right. and so having something else like nuclear power that can run all the time would just be incredibly valuable, and might even be necessary, if we want to solve climate change. and that seems pretty important right now, right? i mean, we’ve got these heat waves across the united states. storms feel more severe, and wildfires are more and more destructive. so finding new sources of clean energy is a pretty urgent task right now. exactly. but also, in addition to fighting climate change, we just need a lot more electricity in general. there’s this enormous growing demand for power from new data centers, from growing interest in artificial intelligence, from electric cars, from all these new factories that are popping up to build solar panels and batteries. and so you have a lot of companies that are just urgently looking for clean energy sources that can run 24 hours a day. so to meet all of these needs right now, there has been a huge push by the us and other countries to figure out how to make nuclear energy, which is emissions free, really a big part of the solution. but question   hasn’t the nuclear power industry been around for a long time? yeah, it’s a very well established technology that’s been around since the 1950s. but the history of using nuclear technology to make electricity has been pretty rocky. it’s had a lot of ups and downs, and the country has really fallen both in and out of love with nuclear over time. [music playing] so when nuclear power was first developed in the 1950s and ‘60s, there were incredibly high hopes for it. electricity   man’s most versatile source of power. and now, man is using a powerful new source of electric power   the atom. people saw it as this potentially unlimited cheap energy source. two ounces of uranium 235 can produce as much electrical energy as 800 carloads of coal. it’s clean energy, no air pollution, powering electric cars. there were interviews where officials were predicting that one day, all new power plants would be nuclear, just solving so many of the world’s problems. so already back then, they had this vision for fossil free future through nuclear. absolutely. the same atoms that send power surging from huge atomic power stations are also opening new realms, which only the endurance of nuclear power can conquer. by the end of the 1960s, you had more than 50 nuclear reactors under construction across the united states. and in the beginning, they were actually quite affordable. but as more of these plants got built, people discovered different issues with them, flaws that need to be corrected, safety issues that need to be addressed with regulations. and you had federal regulators, the agency that is now known as the nuclear regulatory commission, laying out new rules and safety standards and regulations for these plants. right, i wanted to ask you about that, because when i think of arguments against nuclear, i think that it’s not safe. like, that’s the main obstacle. so can you explain some of that thinking? like, what are the safety issues here? so with any nuclear plant, there really are potential risks to people and the environment. nuclear power plants create radiation that needs to be contained. and if you have a big dose of radiation that leaks out into the environment, that can be potentially very harmful to humans and nearby wildlife. and then the plants also produce radioactive waste that takes a long time to decay and needs to be safely stored for many hundreds of years. the safety record for nuclear power has been extremely good in the united states, and that’s largely because the plants have a ton of safety features to contain radiation leaks. and a lot of that has come because the plants are very strictly regulated. so nuclear plants, then, are pretty safe despite the risks. so where did this public perception of danger come from then? so the reality is, no technology is ever going to be completely risk free. there’s always the potential for an accident. and then you had this big shock event in 1979. for many years, there has been a vigorous debate in this country about the safety of the nation’s 72 nuclear energy power plants. that debate is likely to be intensified because of what happened early this morning at a nuclear power plant in pennsylvania. a reactor at the three mile island nuclear power plant in pennsylvania partially melted down. i heard a very loud noise that sounded like a huge release of steam. looked out the window, it was a geyser of steam that was raising up in the air. so that meltdown released some radioactive gases into the environment, which was really concerning. you had hundreds of thousands of people evacuate from the nearby area. the radiation inside the plant is at eight times the deadly level, so strong that after passing through a three foot thick concrete wall, it can be measured a mile away. there are no deaths or big health effects that resulted from the meltdown. the leak ended up being relatively small, but it was huge national news. it’s a lot worse than what they’re telling us. the typical lies. they had to close all those nuclear power plants down. it really horrified a lot of people across the nation, and it caused enormous disruptions in the industry. and in a lot of ways, it was the beginning of the end of nuclear power in the united states in the 20th century. [music playing] there were dozens of reactors still under construction at the time of three mile island. and suddenly, they were all put on pause while regulators reviewed safety rules. they put in place a bunch of new, stricter regulations across the industry, everything from training staff to upgrading piping systems and fire equipment. some projects ended up being delayed for 10 years, and the cost of building a nuclear power plant really went through the roof after that accident. in other words, after three mile island, there was legitimately a concern about safety. and the regulations just piled on, and that made building new plants prohibitively expensive. that’s right. you get a couple different explanations for what happened there. some blame the industry for poorly managing projects. but you also get a lot of people who say that the nuclear regulatory commission had piled on too many rules and driven up the cost of nuclear power. and you do get an argument about whether those regulations are reasonable. you might say, look, nuclear power is inherently dangerous. we should regulate as strictly as possible. there are others who point out that we have a bunch of different regulatory bodies in the us, like the fda, that looks at drugs, and they tend to weigh the benefits with the risks of new technology. a lot of critics of the nuclear regulatory commission say that only focuses on the risks. and when you regulate like that, technologies can become unaffordable. basically, utilities couldn’t afford to take the financial risk of building a new plant anymore. they didn’t know how long it would take. they didn’t know how much it would cost, and they were scared off. ok, so that explains how the hopes for nuclear power died. the potential for danger became big enough that simply making these plants became too expensive, too complicated, too unwieldy, and we basically stopped building them. but as we talked about earlier, the need for clean energy has grown enormously since then. so what is happening now? what’s the state of nuclear energy in the us today? so now what we’re starting to see is a whole bunch of startups and companies going back to the drawing board and completely rethinking nuclear power technology to try to make it more affordable, to try to make it faster, to build. they’re coming up with new ideas for nuclear power plants that are radically different from what we’ve seen over the past 50 years. and now this summer, we’re actually seeing the construction of the very first of these plants in wyoming. [music playing] we’ll be right back. so, brad, you said that new companies are now trying to revive this nuclear industry and update it for the present day, and that we’re seeing that happening in wyoming. what’s going on there? so in southwest wyoming, there’s this coal town called kemmerer. outside the town is this giant coal plant that’s scheduled to close in the next 15 years. and then just down the road, this startup called terrapower has just begun construction on a nuclear power plant in june, which is the only nuclear power plant currently under construction in the united states. [applause] thanks so much for joining us all here today for the groundbreaking of america’s next nuclear power station   kemmerer unit 1. [applause] so i went to the groundbreaking for this plant. and chris levesque, the ceo of terrapower, was there talking about how excited he was to finally start building this new plant. not only is this america’s next reactor. it’s the first advanced reactor in the free world. and the man who started this company is bill gates. i want to acknowledge the great work done by the terrapower team, starting with chris. but it’s kind of a dream. and here we are making it a reality. so bill gates   who i think of as a public health guy, not really a nuclear power guy, why is bill gates involved in a nuclear power plant? yeah, bill gates has been interested for a long time in trying to figure out how to solve climate change. and at this groundbreaking, he told the story of how his interest in nuclear power got started. it was around 2005 when i was talking to some physics friends of mine about the need for electricity and really trying to understand from them why nuclear power had gotten so expensive. and he said he was talking to his scientist friends, who explained how the economics of nuclear power just weren’t working, basically for all the reasons we talked about earlier. and they talked to me about how, if you started anew and were willing to embrace innovation, you could build something that was both safer and cheaper. and so we started a company with a very bold idea to revolutionize nuclear power. so that inspired gates to start terrapower around 2008. he hired a team of hundreds of engineers to redesign a nuclear power plant from scratch because he believed the technology was the key to the country’s growing energy needs. so here we are, standing on what will soon be the bedrock of america’s energy future. and i can’t wait to be here when we turn the reactor on. thank you. [applause] ok, so what do they come up with? so i’ll try not to get too technical here. ok. most nuclear power plants today basically use the atomic fission to heat up a bunch of water and create steam to generate electricity. they’re basically giant kettles. but the problem with that is, because the water is highly pressurized, these plants often need heavy piping, thick containment shields to protect against things like steam explosions and other accidents. and that makes them very complex and very expensive. so terrapower decided, instead of using water, to use liquid sodium   salt, basically, that’s heated up. and the advantage of that is that it operates at lower pressures. and in theory, you don’t need a lot of the same heavy components, the thick shields, other safety features that traditional light water reactors need. and what’s the advantage of that, brad? so the idea is, if you don’t have as many components, it should be cheaper in the long run. they’re making smaller plants so that you’re not investing as much money up front and the risk is not quite as big. and how much approximately would it cost to build one of these things? right now, they’re estimating that the initial plant will cost around $4 billion. now, i talked to a lot of people who expect that to rise a lot as they struggle with novel technology. but their hope is that eventually, they can provide nuclear power for around half the cost of traditional nuclear power plants. wow, half the cost. but the plant is smaller, right? so does that mean this smaller, cheaper plant actually produces less energy? it produces a lot less energy than the traditional big plants. but the hope is that you build a bunch of these. and eventually, you get better at building these over time, and the costs come down. and their dream scenario is, in the 2030s and the 2040s, the country has a pretty potent source of clean energy that can supplement all the wind and solar power that we’re building now. but building that first plant is a gamble. they’ve never done it before. things could go wrong. it could be more expensive than they thought. but one thing that’s unique about terrapower is that they have bill gates behind them, one of the world’s wealthiest men. and he can afford to take that gamble on the first few plants. right. you can afford to lose $2 billion if you’re bill gates, right? that is more or less what he said. so for this first plant, he’s already invested more than $1 billion of his own money into it. the department of energy has pledged up to about $2 billion. and then there are other private investors. but what he said is, he has pledged to stick with the project even if it goes over budget as they work through some initial growing pains. and that’s pretty unique. there are a lot of electric utilities and power companies out there that have said, we’d love to have a nuclear power plant, once you’ve figured out the technology and bring the costs down. but we don’t want to be the first one to do it. right. they don’t want to be the first one in line in the bungee jump, right? right. ok, so this company has the vision. it has the money. it’s already started working toward making all of this a reality. you saw bill gates out there with a shovel in wyoming. what’s the likelihood that this will actually work? so they have to prove that they can build this plant. and it’s going to be tough. there are a huge number of obstacles they face that are pretty daunting. the plant won’t be finished until 2030 at the very earliest, and a lot of people i talked to thought even that might be optimistic. one big hurdle they face is that their reactor uses this specialized type of enriched uranium fuel that currently, only russia makes. and that’s a big problem. right. after russia invaded ukraine in 2022, terrapower said, ok, we’re not going to buy our fuel from russia. we need to get somewhere else. congress has stepped in and basically approved billions of dollars to build up a domestic nuclear fuel supply chain. but that’s going to take time. that’s a very significant hurdle. i mean, years to build up our own supply chain. it’s very significant and it’s a potential risk for the plant. and maybe a bigger issue right now is that, at the moment, their plant hasn’t been fully approved by the regulators   by the nuclear regulatory commission. they’ve submitted an application. they can basically start building all of the parts of the plant around the nuclear reactor where the atomic fission occurs, but they can’t start construction on the reactor itself yet. that approval will take at least two years, and possibly longer. and that’s a big risk for them. is that a deal breaker? so the nuclear regulatory commission has told me that they have received the application and they are very eager to show that they can approve new nuclear technology. but the catch is that, for five decades, the nuclear regulatory commission has largely overseen those old light water reactors. that’s the technology they’re most familiar with. that’s what they’re comfortable with. so now they suddenly have to get comfortable with a brand new technology and ensure that it’s safe. that sounds like it’s going to take a long time. it could take a while. and terrapower has to convince regulators that their plant doesn’t necessarily need the same expensive safety equipment that other reactors have. the theory behind them is that these reactors should be inherently safer and don’t require as many costly components and safety features. but there are definitely some people worried that regulators may be too inflexible and may not be up to the task. ok, so this is hard. there are a lot of obstacles. is there anywhere where these kinds of nuclear reactors are actually up and running? so no one’s trying to build a reactor exactly like terrapower’s. but right now, russia and china are building a large number of nuclear reactors. and they’re also building some advanced models that they hope they can export around the world. china right now is building at least 23 nuclear reactors. we have one, this one in wyoming. so a lot of us officials really think of this as a race because they don’t want to see china and russia exporting their nuclear technology around the world, establishing these long term relationships with other countries, and becoming the dominant suppliers of a technology that the united states invented in the first place. in fact, congress has been pushing a lot of pressure on the nuclear regulatory commission. they have basically been saying, we want these new advanced reactors. you need to get these approved in a timely fashion. so everyone’s watching to see how this process goes. so, brad, if we look at the big picture of what’s going on right now, i wonder if the urgency of the climate crisis   just how acute it’s become, is going to change how we think about the risk benefit analysis of nuclear power, the one that we were talking about before. like, do the tight regulations that made a lot of sense in the 1980s and the 1990s, and we put them in place for some very good reasons, do those now make less sense because of the real pickle that we find ourselves in climate wise? so there’s always going to be demand for pretty strict regulations around nuclear power, just because there are real risks involved. but i think what we’ve started to see in washington is both republicans and democrats start to rethink whether we’ve struck the right balance. in june, we saw congress, with big bipartisan majorities, pass a bill aimed at reforming the nuclear regulatory commission to streamline approvals of new reactor designs, to increase staffing at the agency. but also, there was a pretty striking provision in that bill that basically told the nrc to consider not just the safety of reactors, but also the benefits of nuclear energy technology to society. and the idea is that we should really weigh the risks against the benefits of nuclear power. there are a lot of challenges to building nuclear power. there are technical obstacles. there are financial obstacles. but if nuclear power is going to make a comeback, it will probably require a big shift in how people view the technology and how they weigh the risks of the technology. and i think we’re starting to see that shift. [music playing] brad, thank you. thank you so much. we’ll be right back. here’s what else you should know today. on sunday, diplomats scrambled to contain hostilities between israel and lebanon after israeli forces hit lebanon with multiple strikes overnight in response to a deadly rocket attack on thursday that hit a soccer field in an israeli controlled town. israel blamed hezbollah, an iranian backed lebanese group, for the attack on the druze arab town of majdal shams, which killed 12 people, most of them children. it was the deadliest assault on israeli controlled territory since israel and hezbollah began exchanging missile and rocket fire in october. the israeli response appeared to stop short of a major escalation, but there were still fears that the fallout from the rocket launch would lead to all out war. and   and the flame has been lit for the paris games.   on friday, the 33rd olympic games kicked off in paris. [singing in french] hundreds of thousands of spectators braved heavy downpours to line the banks of the river seine for the first opening ceremony to take place outside of a stadium. your marks and can’t forget about china as the competition got underway   and it’s the first for team usa in paris.   the us scored its first olympic gold in swimming for the men’s relay.   gold. mcintosh takes the silver. and ledecky gets the bronze. swimmer katie ledecky scored her first medal in the 400 meter freestyle. today’s episode was produced by alex stern, diana nguyen, and sydney harper, with help from shannon lin. it was edited by lexie diao and brendan klinkenberg, contains original music by rowan niemisto and pat mccusker, and was engineered by chris wood. our theme music is by jim brunberg and ben landsverk of wonderly. [music playing] that’s it for “the daily.” i’m sabrina tavernise. see you tomorrow. hosted by sabrina tavernise featuring brad plumer produced by alex sterndiana nguyen and sydney harper with shannon m. lin edited by lexie diao and brendan klinkenberg original music by rowan niemisto and pat mccusker engineered by chris wood nuclear power, once the great hope for a clean way to meet the world’s energy needs, fell out of favor decades ago. brad plumer, who covers technology and policy efforts to address global warming for the new york times, explains how one company with a radical idea is now working to bring it back. brad plumer, who covers technology and policy efforts to address global warming for the new york times. work is starting in wyoming coal country on a new type of reactor. its main backer, bill gates, says he’s in it for the emissions free electricity. there are a lot of ways to listen to the daily. here’s how. we aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. you can find them at the top of the page. the daily is made by rachel quester, lynsea garrison, clare toeniskoetter, paige cowett, michael simon johnson, brad fisher, chris wood, jessica cheung, stella tan, alexandra leigh young, lisa chow, eric krupke, marc georges, luke vander ploeg, m.j. davis lin, dan powell, sydney harper, michael benoist, liz o. baylen, asthaa chaturvedi, rachelle bonja, diana nguyen, marion lozano, corey schreppel, rob szypko, elisheba ittoop, mooj zadie, patricia willens, rowan niemisto, jody becker, rikki novetsky, nina feldman, will reid, carlos prieto, ben calhoun, susan lee, lexie diao, mary wilson, alex stern, sophia lanman, shannon lin, diane wong, devon taylor, alyssa moxley, olivia natt, daniel ramirez and brendan klinkenberg. our theme music is by jim brunberg and ben landsverk of wonderly. special thanks to sam dolnick, paula szuchman, lisa tobin, larissa anderson, julia simon, sofia milan, mahima chablani, elizabeth davis moorer, jeffrey miranda, maddy masiello, isabella anderson, nina lassam and nick pitman. an earlier version of this episode included a comment that described liquid sodium coolant in terrapower’s reactor imprecisely. it is a metal, not a salt. when we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. if you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.learn more brad plumer is a times reporter who covers technology and policy efforts to address global warming. more about brad plumer

third in a series with the seattle times on the future of nuclear power in the united states in the era of climate change. kemmerer, wyoming in a triangle shaped park, a bronze statue honors the legacy of j.c. penney. in 1902, he opened a dry goods store here to serve workers who dug coal from a nearby mine. the entrepreneur would go on to forge a nationwide retail empire. more than a century later, a j.c. penney department store still sells clothing in this town of fewer than 3,000 people. in the blocks surrounding the park, many businesses have closed, leaving behind aging storefronts. some that remain open have “for sale” signs in the windows. kemmerer’s decline has come as the coal industry, despite a recent surge in demand, has suffered a long term loss of markets to cleaner, cheaper sources of electricity. in 2025, the town faces a stark reckoning when rocky mountain power’s naughton coal plant is scheduled to close, which also will leave a more difficult future for a nearby mine. “with the power plant shutting down in five years, would you open a new restaurant or new business of any kind?” said tom crank, a former state legislator and civil engineer who has lived in kemmerer since 1968. “this is slowly eating away at the community.” please take a look at the new openings in our newsroom. this week came big news, and fresh hope for an economic revival of kemmerer. terrapower, a bellevue based nuclear energy company founded by bill gates, announced plans to build a new reactor called natrium cooled by liquid sodium at the site of the naughton coal plant. the plant was one of four scheduled for closure that were under consideration for terrapower’s wyoming advanced nuclear demonstration project. “we think natrium will be a game changer for the energy industry,” gates said in a june virtual appearance in wyoming. “wyoming has been a leader in energy for over a century. and we hope that our investment in natrium will allow wyoming to stay in the lead for many decades to come.” nuclear power generates electricity without the direct combustion of fossil fuels, which releases greenhouse gases. and gates, co founder of microsoft, has been one of america’s most high profile proponents of nuclear power to help the nation reach net zero emissions by 2050. in his virtual appearance, gates promoted natrium as a safer, more flexible and less expensive reactor than those cooled by water in conventional plants. gates’ advocacy has earned him praise and pushback amid a global debate about nuclear power’s role in the 21st century. in europe, germany plans to shut down its last nuclear power plants in 2022, while france remains dependent on nuclear for most of its electricity. in china, the government is backing a program of nuclear expansion that until u.s. restrictions were imposed in 2019 included a terrapower proposal to build an experimental reactor south of beijing. in the united states, where nuclear provides 20 percent of the electricity, critics say it remains a costly option with unresolved issues over long term waste storage. and they say the potential of advanced reactors is being oversold. “many of the claims that are being made about these types of reactors are simply untrue or highly misleading,” said edwin lyman, a physicist with the union of concerned scientists who this year published a report on advanced nuclear technology that included a harsh critique of terrapower’s project. shannon anderson, staff attorney with wyoming’s powder river basin resource council, said the terrapower reactor is “no silver bullet solution,” and would be too little, too late to address climate change or the economic impacts of coal’s decline in wyoming. “it doesn’t answer the tough questions that we really need to have answered in the state,” anderson said. since 2009, terrapower has spent more than $1.4 million on contributions to national political campaigns and lobbying, according to open secrets, a nonprofit tracking money in politics. terrapower has benefitted from bipartisan political support. during the june announcement of the four sites, gates was joined by u.s. secretary of energy jennifer granholm, wyoming sen. john barrasso and gov. mark gordon eager to launch nuclear power generation in the nation’s largest coal producing state. terrapower’s wyoming project is projected to cost nearly $4 billion. taxpayers, under contract terms, pick up half that, matching private sector spending dollar for dollar. congress already has allocated most of the nearly $2 billion to the energy department to spend on terrapower, much of it in the infrastructure bill signed into law monday by president joe biden. the company’s ceo, chris levesque, calls it the largest public investment in an advanced nuclear power project in the nation’s history. the energy department’s contract stipulates the natrium reactor must be operating by 2028 lightning speed in the nuclear world. a partner in the project is rocky mountain power’s parent company, pacificorp, controlled by berkshire hathaway, a holding company led by gates’ billionaire friend warren buffett. the 345 megawatt terrapower reactor is designed to generate electricity around the clock and would be coupled with a molten salt system to store heat and enable the plant to surge up to 500 megawatts for over five hours enough electricity for about 400,000 homes. the project would employ 2,000 workers during construction and 250 others to operate the plant. terrapower officials hope this project can be replicated at other u.s. coal plants. “this [terrapower] technology is amazing there’s no other word for it,” said gary w. hoogeven, president and ceo of rocky mountain power, which plans to close 19 coal fired power plant units by 2040. “i couldn’t be more excited for you, those communities and our employees that there is a solution. it’s coming, and terrapower, i believe, is it,” hoogeven said as the project was announced. in kemmerer, a conservative town in a fiercely republican state, some are wary of gates’ wide ranging agenda, from combating climate change to developing covid 19 vaccines. but many people strongly support the new nuclear plant. “when it comes to decarbonization, we’re not stupid,” said kemmerer mayor bill thek. “we realize that’s coming we want to mitigate anything, anywhere that we can to make our town not dry up and blow away.” the naughton power plant’s first unit came online in 1963, when coal generation of electricity was in the early stage of a long expansion that peaked in the first decade of the 21st century. the plant was built near the coal deposits that had given birth to kemmerer back in the 1890s. the fuel went to heat homes, fuel industries and feed the boilers for locomotive steam engines that pulled trains across the west. by the 1960s, the mining had morphed into open pit operations that used heavy equipment to bring coal out of the ground. the coal moved on a tipple to the power plant, which by 1971 included three separate generating units able to produce 445 megawatts of electricity. the mine, along with oil and gas development in surrounding lincoln county, helped usher in economic growth as the population of kemmerer reached 3,273 in 1980, nearly double its 1950 census, according to a city planning document. “everything was busy,” recalls john sawaya, a retired businessman who was proprietor of a downtown kemmerer shoe shop and men’s clothing store. back in the ’80s, sawaya was on the school board and recalls discussions about the likely need for a new school. that school was never built, a sign of the boom and bust nature of the energy industry. for most of the past decade, coal has been losing market share to natural gas and renewable power generation. and in 2019, the largest and most modern of naughton’s three coal units shut down with a conversion that enables it to burn natural gas. pacificorp’s plans to close naughton and other wyoming power units put state politicians on high alert, and resulted in new laws to try to boost the industry and head off closures. one requires rocky mountain power to offer naughton units, as well as others slated for closure, for sale. “my drive is to save those people’s jobs,” said wyoming senate president dan dockstader, a republican behind several of those laws. this year, natural gas prices have soared, giving coal fired power plants a boost with generation expected to rise by 18 percent compared to 2020, according to an energy information administration report. but at the naughton plant, which employs more than 100 people, the end of an era appeared to be fast approaching. it has been increasingly difficult to retain workers, according to eric backman, a 42 year veteran of the plant who works in a control room near a turbine and boiler. skilled plant workers often earn more than $40 an hour, but backman said the plant in recent years has been chronically short handed as younger people with families look for somewhere else to go. backman plans to retire in january after nearly 43 years at the plant. within the plant’s workforce, backman said, there is broad support for a nuclear plant that could offer new jobs. bill gates brainstormed with colleagues about nuclear power in 2006, a year of transition as he exited day to day responsibilities at microsoft. he became convinced nuclear power was key to a global supply of low carbon energy, and founded terrapower to develop a safer, more efficient reactor. terrapower initially focused on what was called a “traveling wave reactor,” which was intended to safely operate for decades without refueling, and might eventually be able to run on depleted uranium, a byproduct of nuclear industry processing operations, or on spent fuel from a conventional reactor. but the traveling wave reactor proved difficult to bring from concept to demonstration, and after years of research and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, development is on hold. in wyoming, terrapower is focused on a different design, the natrium reactor. natrium is the latin word for sodium, which would be used as a coolant. this plant would use enriched uranium fuel, which involves processing that increases the percentage of uranium 235 isotopes that can sustain fission. levesque, terrapower’s ceo, says advanced materials and computing will create a reactor that is “walkaway safe,” and produces less waste. the plant could quickly flex power generation to help keep the grid in balance as more solar and wind projects come online. terrapower hopes to secure a permit from the nuclear regulatory commission before construction begins in 2024, then an operating permit to enable the plant to begin generating electricity in 2028. “we do have a lot of weight on our shoulders,” levesque said, citing the aggressive timeline as the biggest challenge. “but it needs to be ready, because the need will be there.” lyman, the physicist who watchdogs nuclear power with the union of concerned scientists, said that to expect the advanced designs to prove themselves on that timeline is audacious and possibly magical thinking. the basic idea of a sodium cooled reactors has been around since 1951 but they never came into widespread commercial use. development efforts included a sodium cooled reactor in michigan, called fermi 1, that suffered a partial meltdown in 1966, restarted in 1970, then shut down in 1972, according to the union of concerned scientists report released earlier this year by lyman. “the [nuclear industry’s] public relations machine is being fueled by the entry of a few large, deep pocketed investors, but that doesn’t mean the fundamentals have really changed,” lyman said. lyman disputes terrapower’s assessment of the safety of the sodium cooled reactor design, which in his report he rates as significantly worse than conventional reactors cooled by water. fire can break out if air or water comes into contact with liquid sodium. lyman also cites the risk of an out of control chain reaction known as a “supercritical power excursion,” which would involve a power increase so rapid it would be impossible to control as occurred during the 1986 chernobyl accident in the soviet union. lyman expects terrapower’s uranium fuel enrichment will top 18 percent below the more than 90 percent preferred to create atomic weapons but more than triple the percentage of conventional reactors cooled by water. he says this would pose a greater security risk. and if the technology gains a global foothold, the production, processing and transport of this fuel could increase the risk of the spread of nuclear weapons, he said. terrapower’s design will undergo a safety review by the nuclear regulatory commission during the licensing process, according to scott burnell, a commission spokesperson. for terrapower, another complication involves securing the fuel needed to operate the reactor. it is called haleu, or “high assay, low enriched uranium.” the u.s. lacks the capacity to produce it on a scale required to supply terrapower and other advanced nuclear reactors, such as the x energy project proposed for washington state. terrapower has partnered with a company called centrus energy corp. to expand a pilot plant in piketon, ohio. but just to produce enough fuel for the terrapower plant in wyoming would require at least tripling the output, and would require its own federal licensing process. so some of this fuel might, at least initially, need to be imported from other nations. terrapower officials said that all four towns that were considered for the power plant showed strong community support. in the end, the decision came down to factors that included seismic analysis of potential sites, construction logistics, power transmission networks and the projected closure dates of the different coal plants. “we tried to figure out what was the best site for having a successful deployment of the natrium technology,” terrapower’s levesque said tuesday. for kemmerer and lincoln county officials, there are now new challenges to prepare for a multibillion dollar project launched on a tract of land yet to be determined close by the naughton plant. “there is a lot of excitement. it’s great news, and there is going to be a lot involved,” said jerry hansen, a lincoln county commissioner who said that one challenge will be to figure out some sort of lodging for all the construction workers. some of these construction jobs could be taken by coal power plant workers who will be unemployed as the naughton plant shuts down. but those are temporary jobs, and the full time jobs in the power plant would not be available until 2028 at the earliest. they would require new training that terrapower officials say will be offered. crank, the former state legislator and civil engineer, said all these jobs will bring about more prosperous times in the town he calls home. he recalls how hard it was to get a loan to build a new office building in the late 1990s because the banks were so wary of kemmerer. with bill gates’ terrapower making a bet here, he figures new loans will be easier to come by. perhaps you noticed: this story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. that’s because inside climate news is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. we do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. we make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it. that’s not all. we also share our news for free with scores of other media organizations around the country. many of them can’t afford to do environmental journalism of their own. we’ve built bureaus from coast to coast to report local stories, collaborate with local newsrooms and co publish articles so that this vital work is shared as widely as possible. two of us launched icn in 2007. six years later we earned a pulitzer prize for national reporting, and now we run the oldest and 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supported by work is starting in wyoming coal country on a new type of reactor. its main backer, bill gates, says he’s in it for the emissions free electricity. by brad plumer photographs by benjamin rasmussen reporting from kemmerer, wyo. outside a small coal town in southwest wyoming, a multibillion dollar effort to build the first in a new generation of american nuclear power plants is underway. workers began construction on tuesday on a novel type of nuclear reactor meant to be smaller and cheaper than the hulking reactors of old and designed to produce electricity without the carbon dioxide that is rapidly heating the planet. the reactor being built by terrapower, a start up, won’t be finished until 2030 at the earliest and faces daunting obstacles. the nuclear regulatory commission hasn’t yet approved the design, and the company will have to overcome the inevitable delays and cost overruns that have doomed countless nuclear projects before. what terrapower does have, however, is an influential and deep pocketed founder. bill gates, currently ranked as the seventh richest person in the world, has poured more than $1 billion of his fortune into terrapower, an amount that he expects to increase. “if you care about climate, there are many, many locations around the world where nuclear has got to work,” mr. gates said during an interview near the project site on monday. “i’m not involved in terrapower to make more money. i’m involved in terrapower because we need to build a lot of these reactors.” mr. gates, the former head of microsoft, said he believed the best way to solve climate change was through innovations that make clean energy competitive with fossil fuels, a philosophy he described in his 2021 book, “how to avoid a climate disaster.”

 work is starting in wyoming coal country on a new type of reactor. its main backer, bill gates, says he’s in it for the emissions free electricity. by the new york times outside a small coal town in southwest wyoming, a multibillion dollar effort to build the first in a new generation of american nuclear power plants is underway. workers began construction on tuesday on a novel type of nuclear reactor meant to be smaller and cheaper than the hulking reactors of old and designed to produce electricity without the carbon dioxide that is rapidly heating the planet. the reactor being built by terrapower, a start up, won’t be finished until 2030 at the earliest and faces daunting obstacles. the nuclear regulatory commission hasn’t yet approved the design, and the company will have to overcome the inevitable delays and cost overruns that have doomed countless nuclear projects before. what terrapower does have, however, is an influential and deep pocketed founder.