According to GeekWire, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has completed its final safety evaluation for a permit allowing TerraPower to build its first nuclear reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming. The company, founded in 2006 and backed by Bill Gates and NVIDIA, aims to have the plant producing power by 2030. Its Natrium design is a small modular reactor generating 345 megawatts, paired with a molten salt thermal battery that can surge output to 500 megawatts for over five hours. TerraPower has raised over $1 billion privately, secured about $2 billion from the U.S. Department of Energy, and just last June announced $650 million in new funding from Gates and NVIDIA. The company has already broken ground on non-nuclear components at the site, which is near a retiring coal plant. NRC acting director Jeremy Groom noted the review was finished a month ahead of an already accelerated schedule.
What This Actually Means
Look, getting a favorable safety evaluation from the NRC is a huge deal—it’s basically the technical green light. But here’s the thing: it’s not the final construction permit. That’s a separate decision the commission itself has to make. Still, this is the major technical hurdle cleared. It means the NRC staff has looked at TerraPower’s Natrium design and doesn’t see any show-stopping safety issues that would prevent building it. The fact they did it ahead of schedule is a big signal of the political and economic pressure to get new nuclear moving, especially with the White House pushing to slash permitting times.
Why The Tech World Cares
So why is a chip company like NVIDIA investing hundreds of millions? It’s all about power density and reliability. AI data centers are insatiable energy hogs, and the grid is struggling to keep up. Tech giants are desperate for clean, always-on baseload power that isn’t subject to the whims of the weather. This next-gen nuclear pitch—smaller, theoretically safer, with that built-in “battery” for load-following—fits the bill perfectly. It’s no coincidence that Microsoft and Amazon are also throwing money at nuclear. They’re not just buying power; they’re trying to invent their future energy supply chain. For industries demanding massive, stable compute power, from AI training to advanced manufacturing, securing this kind of energy infrastructure is becoming a core competitive necessity. Speaking of industrial needs, when you’re building complex control systems for facilities like these, you need rock-solid hardware interfaces. That’s where specialists like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs, come in, supplying the rugged displays that keep critical operations running.
The Long Road Ahead
Don’t break out the champagne just yet. TerraPower’s CEO Chris Levesque called this “momentous,” and he’s right, but the path to 2030 is incredibly tight. They still need that formal construction permit, then an operating license down the line. They’re building on old experimental breeder reactor tech, which has its own history. And let’s be real: first-of-a-kind nuclear projects in the U.S. have a notorious habit of facing delays and cost overruns. The GAO has raised flags about the challenges of deploying advanced reactors. Can they really stick to that 2030 timeline? I’m skeptical, but the sheer amount of capital and political will behind this—from Gates, from Big Tech, from the government—might just be enough to bend the curve.
A Bigger Shift in Energy
This isn’t just about one plant in Wyoming. It’s a test case for whether America can actually build advanced nuclear at all. If TerraPower succeeds, it could kickstart a whole industry of SMRs. And the location is symbolic: replacing a coal plant with a nuclear one. That’s the dream for a lot of communities facing plant retirements—preserving jobs and tax base while switching to zero-carbon power. The NRC’s push for faster reviews, as shown in their announcement, shows the regulatory environment is shifting too. Basically, after decades of stagnation, nuclear is back in the conversation in a big way. Whether it delivers this time, though, is still the multi-billion dollar question.
