Gov. Spencer Cox speaks to reporters during the last night of the legislative session at the Utah State Capitol, Friday, March 7, 2025. (Photo by Alex Goodlett for Utah News Dispatch)
Utah signed a new memorandum of understanding with TerraPower, a nuclear energy company founded by Bill Gates, to explore a potential site for a reactor and an energy storage plant in the state.
The agreement establishes a non-binding framework for cooperation between the Utah Office of Energy Development, TerraPower and Flagship Companies, a developer, aiming to bring a project to Utah similar to one under construction near Kemmerer, Wyoming — a sodium-cooled fast reactor known as Natrium.
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Preliminary site recommendations will come by the end of 2025, according to a news release from the Utah Office of Energy Development. The state and the companies will consider factors like “community support, the physical characteristics of the site, the ability of the site to obtain a license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and access to existing infrastructure.”
Gov. Spencer Cox praised the project’s prospects, saying it aligns with Operation Gigawatt, his plan to double the state’s energy production over the next decade.
“Operation Gigawatt is about adding capacity from diverse sources — nuclear, natural gas, geothermal and more — so families and businesses have power that is affordable, reliable and clean,” Cox said in a statement. “This agreement with TerraPower will help keep rates low, strengthen our grid and ensure Utah’s future can be as strong as our past.”
The agreement also adds to a list of memorandums of understanding the state has signed with other nuclear energy developers in its quest to lead in the country’s “nuclear renaissance.”
TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque said in an interview with Bloomberg Podcasts that new technologies, like Natrium, will be essential to upscale nuclear energy in the country, since they are cheaper and safer than current plants.
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“It’s still a fission reactor. We break uranium atoms to release a lot of heat and boil water to make steam and drive turbines to make electricity the old fashioned way,” Levesque said. “But by cooling the reactor with liquid sodium, it allows us to have a low pressure plant, which is going to be safer.”
The company has already made progress with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its first plant in Wyoming, Levesque said. After that’s cleared, the timeline for the construction of a Natrium reactor could be about three years, “which is much shorter than today’s technologies that require all of the steel and concrete,” he said.
For Cox, the project represents an important step in the country’s advancement of nuclear technology, which he said has stalled for the last 50 years. Building more energy resources is in the nation’s best interest, he added, especially with the emergence of power-hungry AI and data centers.
Utah Republican Sen. John Curtis, who has championed green energy initiatives in Washington, D.C., is also on board with the project.
“Utah must lead in developing energy solutions that are affordable, reliable and clean,” he said in a statement. “Exploring advanced nuclear technology aligns with our commitment to energy independence and reflects the kind of forward-thinking policy our state, and nation, needs.”
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