On March 4, for the first time in eight years, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a construction permit for a commercial nuclear reactor, which is to be built in western Wyoming, the Associated Press reported.
TerraPower, a company backed by its own primary founder Bill Gates, will build a sodium-cooled reactor in the area, to be completed in 2030. The project is reportedly worth $4 billion.
"We have spent thousands of manpower hours working to achieve this momentous accomplishment," TerraPower President and CEO Chris Levesque said in a statement.
The new plant will be situated very close to a former coal plant that has been converted to burn methane gas, AP News reported. It is also 130 miles from Salt Lake City.
Once it is built and put into commission, the reactor is expected to have an everyday capacity of 345 megawatts. When pushed to its limits, it will produce almost 500 megawatts.
That amount of electricity, enough to power about 400,000 homes, is expected to help lower the rising cost of electricity in the area caused by the construction of AI data centers.
Since it is being generated with nuclear power, it also isn't associated with a significant amount of air pollution, the way that fuel sources such as methane and oil are. This means it can be a tool in the fight to cool down the planet, which has been superheated when warmth has been trapped inside the atmosphere by air pollution.
Nuclear power does also have some drawbacks, such as the fact that it creates a small amount of long-lasting radioactive waste that must be safely disposed of.
However, it also makes up for some of the weaknesses of clean energy sources: it can generate power at any time, night and day, in any weather, unlike solar and wind power, which require battery storage to meet 24/7 demand. This means that while it is not the ultimate goal of a transition away from polluting fuels, it is a useful option in the short term.
And according to TerraPower, this reactor would actually produce less waste than older models, making it an even better idea, per AP News.
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