Bill Gates-backed TerraPower has started nuclear construction in Kemmerer, Wyoming, but the AI power story here is still more promise than supply.
TerraPower is finally pouring concrete for the part of Kemmerer Power Station Unit 1 that matters most: the reactor itself. On April 23, 2026, the company started construction on its first commercial Natrium plant near PacifiCorp's retiring Naughton coal plant in Lincoln County, Wyoming. If you want to understand why AI companies keep circling nuclear power, this is the project to watch.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted on March 4, 2026 to approve the construction permit, and NRC records list the construction permit decision on March 9. That was the first commercial reactor construction approval in the U.S. in 10 years, and the Department of Energy called it the first construction permit ever issued by the NRC for a commercial non-light-water power reactor. That matters.
Kemmerer isn't another slide deck about future reactors. TerraPower broke ground on non-nuclear work at the site in June 2024, then moved into the regulated nuclear build after the NRC decision this spring. The plant is meant to be a 345-megawatt sodium-cooled fast reactor paired with molten salt storage, which lets the system push output to 500 megawatts when the grid needs more power. The reactor runs steady. The storage does the flexing.
AI Wants Power Before Nuclear Can Arrive #
That is exactly why the AI industry is interested. Data centers don't care whether the wind is blowing at 2 a.m. when a training run is still eating electricity. They need firm power, and they need it in quantities that make ordinary corporate clean-energy deals look small. TerraPower's sales pitch is plain enough: baseload nuclear power with a storage system that can answer demand spikes.
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Here's the thing, though. None of this powers a single AI data center in 2026. TerraPower says the Kemmerer project is expected to be completed around 2030, and the company still needs a separate operating license before the plant can run. Five years is fast for nuclear. It is also late for the GPU clusters being built right now.
Meta has already made its move. In January 2026, Meta said its agreement with TerraPower would support development of two new Natrium units capable of up to 690 megawatts of firm power, with delivery targeted as early as 2032. Meta also secured rights to energy from up to six additional Natrium units capable of 2.1 gigawatts by 2035. That is not eight plants under construction today. It is two funded units, six possible follow-ons, and a long wait.
TerraPower has also been working with Sabey Data Centers on wider Natrium deployment, and it has explored new sites beyond Wyoming, including Utah under Gov. Spencer Cox's Operation Gigawatt push. Those details matter because nuclear deals can sound bigger than they are. A memorandum, an option, and a plant with workers on site are three different things. You should not treat them as equal.
The Money Is Serious, But So Is The Clock #
The capital behind TerraPower is serious. The company announced a $650 million fundraise in June 2025 with NVentures, Nvidia's venture arm, joining existing backers including Bill Gates and HD Hyundai. TerraPower said the round supports Kemmerer and future Natrium deployments. The Department of Energy also says the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program authorizes up to $2 billion for Natrium, with TerraPower and its partners matching that investment dollar for dollar.
Nvidia's presence is the small signal worth noticing. The chipmaker doesn't need to own power plants to understand where its customers are getting stuck. Chips are still scarce and expensive, but electricity is becoming the harder constraint in the places where AI capacity is actually being built.
Kemmerer gives TerraPower a real-world answer to that problem, and the local numbers are not abstract. TerraPower says the project will mobilize roughly 1,600 workers during construction and employ about 250 full-time staff once operational. For a coal town facing the retirement of an existing plant, that is not just an energy transition slogan. It is payroll.
Frankly, the weak part of the story is not whether AI companies want nuclear power. They clearly do. Microsoft has a deal tied to restarting Three Mile Island Unit 1, Amazon has backed small modular reactor work, and Meta is now attached to TerraPower, Oklo and Vistra nuclear projects. The weak part is timing. The grid pressure is arriving before the advanced reactors are.
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That concern is not coming only from nuclear critics on the sidelines. In a July 2026 piece published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Molly Langabeer and M.V. Ramana argued that next-generation nuclear projects are moving too slowly to meet near-term data center demand. You do not have to accept every part of their view to see the basic problem. A reactor that arrives in 2030 or 2032 cannot solve a power crunch in 2026.
So Kemmerer is important, but not because it rescues the current AI buildout. It is important because it tests whether advanced nuclear can move from press releases and permitting charts into steel, concrete and operating megawatts. Until that happens, AI companies will keep buying whatever power they can get, and TerraPower's most important date is not the groundbreaking. It is the day electrons actually reach the grid.
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