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To say that Kemmerer, Wyoming is a community built on coal is an understatement.
Not only has the city — population just over 2,400 — been a coal mining hub since 1897, but it’s actually named after the man who founded the area’s first mines.
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But America’s energy needs are changing, and Kemmerer is ground zero as the site of the first nuclear power plant built by TerraPower, a nuclear design and technology company founded in 2008 by billionaire Bill Gates.
“It will be the most advanced nuclear facility in the world, and it will be much safer and produce far less waste than conventional reactors,” Gates wrote of the plant — known as Natrium — in 2023. He added that nuclear power is needed to meet growing energy demand while reducing carbon emissions.
The town is covering half the cost of the $4 billion plant, which TerraPower touts as “the first utility-scale advanced nuclear power plant in the United States,” capable of powering up to 400,000 homes while using liquid sodium instead of water to cool reactors and absorb heat.
Opponents, though, disagree with that assessment, and some members of the community aren’t so sure how they feel about a nuclear reactor next door either. As resident Janet Lively, who works in a Kemmerer coffee shop, told USA Today, “I would say our community is split.”
From coal country to nuclear boomtown
Brian Muir, Kemmerer’s City Administrator, told Moneywise that while the city “still desires to be known as a coal-mining community” with an active coal plant, the timing of the nuclear plant’s arrival “is fortuitous” due to the conversions of other local coal plants to gas.
Muir expects “a dramatic economic impact during the building of the plant,” with up to 300 workers arriving this year and 1,600 “at peak construction.”
The plant is slated for completion by 2030 and, Muir claimed, will provide 250 full-time jobs.
“There will also be a multiplier effect of jobs and businesses that support the construction workforce and new residents, and we are pursuing creating more nuclear-related jobs and industry in Kemmerer,” Muir added. “We are glad that we can have yet another type of multigenerational workforce to keep our community thriving and prosperous.”
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Local real estate is already starting to show signs of that shift. Zillow stats show that Kemmerer house prices shot up from just over $219,000 on average at the beginning of 2024 to nearly $262,000 as of June 2026.
“Right from the start, we saw a huge boom in property sales … and since we were picked, the intensity has gone up,” Kemmerer Mayor Robert Bowen told Homes.com in April.
Bowen also predicted “a massive boom with our restaurants” and the potential arrival of bigger chain stores and an overall increase in city sales tax revenue.
TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque, meanwhile, called the Kemmerer plant the “commercial blueprint to mobilise a fleet of Natrium plants” around the country and, eventually, the world.
Tara K. Righetti, co-director of the University of Wyoming’s Nuclear Energy Research Center, told Moneywise that “As the host of the nation’s first full-scale commercial advanced reactor to receive an NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) construction permit, Wyoming is on the forefront of the nuclear renaissance that is underway in the United States.”
Not everyone is sold on Kemmerer’s nuclear future
Not surprisingly, the Natrium plant also has its detractors.
Some residents told Cowboy State Daily that they like Kemmerer’s size and don’t want to see it grow too much beyond a population of 6,000 residents, while others are “racing against time to address aging infrastructure and limited amenities.”
The publication reported that, currently, plant workers often spend money on food and accommodations in bigger nearby cities — which they said signals what could happen once the plant is built.
Dr. Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), meanwhile, dubbed the plant “a true ‘Cowboy Chernobyl'” when he published his organization’s concerns last year.
He alleged that the NRC rushed its safety evaluation to meet a timeline put forward by President Trump — who champions bringing back nuclear energy — and warned that liquid sodium coolant is flammable and reactor instabilities could damage “the reactor’s hot and highly radioactive nuclear fuel.”
Dr. Lyman also claimed that the facility “lacks a physical containment structure to reduce the release of radioactive materials into the environment if a core melt occurs.”
TerraPower didn’t return Moneywise’s request for comment, but NRC spokesperson Scott Burnell told Moneywise that their review of the plant covered its “ability to safely handle events such as earthquakes, blizzards and flooding” and “had favorable environmental impact conclusions.”
He added that the review found “The Natrium design can safely account for disruptions in normal operation and safely shut down, and that TerraPower has acceptable plans for safely storing the reactor’s spent fuel and other radioactive waste.”
Still, some residents remain leery.
One of them, Charlotte Sherbeyn, told USA Today that she’s concerned about the devastation caused by a nuclear meltdown meeting the natural gas and coal that exists underground.
She added, bluntly: “If that blows up, we’re done.”
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This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com under the title: Bill Gates is building a $4-billion nuclear facility in a Wyoming coal town of just 2,400. Locals are ‘split’
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