TerraPower is the nuclear energy company founded by former Microsoft CEO and co-founder Bill Gates. It just announced that it has a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with a major U.S. data center developer to deploy advanced nuclear reactors to power existing and future facilities.
     On January 21st, TerraPower said it will collaborate with Sabey Data Centers (SDC) on “a strategic collaboration agreement to leverage advanced nuclear Natrium plants into SDC’s current and future data center operations.” Last year, TerraPower broke ground on the first U.S. advanced nuclear project, located near PacifiCorp’s Naughton Power Plant in Wyoming. The Naughton plant will stop burning coal in 2026. It will stop its use of natural gas within the next decade. In a press release, TerraPower said the venture will explore building new Natrium plants in the Rocky Mountain region, and Texas, “to support growing power needs for SDC-owned data centers.”
     Bill Gates told the audience at last year’s groundbreaking in Wyoming that they were “standing on what will soon be the bedrock of America’s energy future … this is a big step toward safe, abundant, zero-carbon energy, and it’s important for the future of this country that projects like this succeed.”
     Chris Levesque is TerraPower president and CEO. He said, “At its heart, TerraPower is an innovation-driven company, and we are thrilled to collaborate with Sabey to address the surging energy demands of data centers with clean, reliable and adaptable solutions like the Natrium technology. The energy sector is transforming at an unprecedented pace after decades of business as usual, and meaningful progress will require strategic collaboration across industries. Together, we can ensure advanced nuclear technology plays a vital role in securing a clean, resilient energy grid.”
     The two companies said that they “will explore multiple project execution structures to meet the exponential demand in data center energy needs with TerraPower’s innovative advanced nuclear + storage Natrium technology.”
    The Natrium system features a three hundred forty-five-megawatt reactor and can be optimized for specific markets. Its innovative thermal storage has the potential to boost the system’s output to five hundred megawatts of power for more than five and a half hours when needed.
     Several technology companies are looking at nuclear power as a viable option to provide electricity for their energy-intensive date centers operations. Microsoft signed a deal last September to help restart a retired reactor at Three Mile Island. Google and Amazon have also announced plans to aid the development of advanced reactors to power their data centers.
     Tim Mirick is the president of SDC. He said, “Sabey Data Centers is dedicated to pioneering sustainable energy solutions to support our customers’ growth. Our strategic collaboration with TerraPower represents a substantial move toward integrating clean, innovative power technologies into the heart of our operations.”
     Jeffrey Kanne is the vice chairman of SDC and president and CEO of National Real Estate Advisors. He said, “This strategic relationship exemplifies the forward-thinking collaboration necessary to meet the evolving energy demands of our digital future.”
     Nuclear industry experts have said the rise of artificial intelligence and data centers is projected to increase U.S. electricity demand by three hundred and twenty-three terawatts by 2030.

TerraPower

     Nuclear laboratories in Canada are interested in exploring the commercialization of small reactor designs. A Request for Expression of Interest (RFEOI) has been issued to test the market interest in licensing Atomic Energy of Canada Limited’s (AECL) SLOWPOKE and Nuclear Battery reactor technologies for commercialization.
    AECL’s SLOWPOKE (Safe Low-Power ‘Kritical’ Experiment) technology is a family of low-pressure, pool-type reactors. The family includes the SLOWPOKE-2, which is a small, simple, inexpensive, and inherently safe reactor design that has seen years of operations experience and has been successfully licensed and operated safely in Canada for decades.
     Nuclear technology developers and other interested stakeholders have been invited to share their insights and feedback about the innovative reactor designs and technologies with the latest RFEOI.
     Lou Riccoboni is the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) Vice-President of Corporate Affairs and Business Development. He stated that the company’s program of work includes the small modular reactor (SMR) siting program and Canadian Nuclear Research Initiative (CNRI). CNL has leveraged its resources to help develop and deploy the next generation of nuclear reactors in Canada.

     Riccoboni added, “With that goal in mind, we see real opportunity and value in AECL’s SLOWPOKE and Nuclear Battery designs, which have tremendous potential to help combat climate change, and to advance research in physics and health sciences.”
     He emphasized that this RFEOI process allows CNL to engage technology developers to determine whether there is serious commercial interest in exploiting these innovative designs. This would help advance these important causes while making the most of AECL’s Intellectual Property on behalf of Canadian taxpayers.
     CNL’s Nuclear Battery technology is a solid-state micro-reactor concept that would be able to produce a combination of electricity (up to six hundred kilowatts) and heat (up to twenty-four hundred kilowatts at about four hundred °C) for up to fifteen years without the need for refueling. It could also survive all postulated accident scenarios without human intervention, according to AECL. The Nuclear Battery has never advanced to construction.
     CNL has also claimed that the AECL Nuclear Battery is appropriate for off-grid applications. The Nuclear Battery concept, largely envisioned for electricity or industrial heat processes, was developed and advanced by AECL in the 1980s and 90s.
     Initial research indicates that both SLOWPOKE and the Nuclear Battery may have broad appeal to the international nuclear technology development community. AECL and CNL are currently interested in learning more about market interest in these technologies which include reactor design, engineering and sales, as well as end-use applications, such as district heating, electrical generation, isotope production and neutron activation analysis, according to a press release.
     The AECL maintains that a major benefit of the SLOWPOKE family of reactors is their ‘safe by physics’ design, which simplifies operations and licensing, and allows unattended operation for up to 24 hours.
     These reactors have been utilized safely for about five decades in Canada and Jamaica, on university campuses and government installations. Their applications include neutron activation analysis, neutron radiography, and education. The success of small SLOWPOKE research reactors has motivated research into the potential for larger versions of the concept, which could be used for district heating, as per the press release.

Canadian Nuclear Laboratory

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     Wise County was one of the areas being considered for siting a small modular nuclear reactor after Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin announced in October of 2022 that he wanted to deploy the nation’s first SMR in the coalfields region of the state. This region was devastated by the ongoing downturn in the coal industry.
     SMRs are smaller, simpler versions of traditional fission nuclear reactors that can be built in a factory and shipped to a site for installation. They produce about one third of the power of currently operating full-sized nuclear fission reactors.
     In March of 2024, Youngkin said that he felt that other sites would be a better fit for the siting of the first SMR. He added that multiple SMRs will eventually be deployed across the state and Southwest Virginia might still get one.
     Dominion Energy is the state’s largest utility. In July of 2024, it announced plans to construct the country’s first SMR in the 2030s at its North Anna plant. This plant is already licensed for a third conventional reactor.
     LENOWISCO has already conducted two studies regarding SMRs, one a feasibility study and the other examining the supply chain. GO Virginia was one of the funders for this research. Asked if those studies would pertain to the microreactor, Miller said that that is a “completely different animal.”
     The grant for the microreactor study must now be approved by the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development. The grant will need to be matched by an additional fifty thousand dollars.
     The region’s legislators, economic development officials and some local government leaders wanted to site an SMR in the area because of the growth and jobs it was expected to bring. There was also public opposition, particularly from environmental groups that claimed that the public was left out of the process and worried that the technology was new and not proven.
     Wally Smith is the vice president of The Clinch Coalition, which is an environmental group. The group claimed Tuesday that there was a lack of opportunities for public feedback with respect to the sites included in the 2023 LENOWISCO SMR feasibility study that resulted in “confusion and distrust” in Southwest Virginia. He added that he hopes that local officials “learned lessons from that debacle” and will involve local residents in planning for the region’s energy future.
     Smith said “In particular, GO Virginia Region One could step up to the plate and make an inclusive and intentional public listening component a condition of funding this recently proposed microreactor feasibility study. That would go a long way towards restoring the public’s trust in that organization’s ability to grow the local economy not just to benefit political and industry VIPs but to improve the lives of local families.”
     GO Virginia Region 1 includes the cities of Bristol, Galax and Norton, as well as the counties of Bland, Buchanan, Carroll, Dickenson, Grayson, Lee, Russell, Scott, Smyth, Tazewell, Washington, Wise and Wythe.

Dominion Energy

Part 1 of 2 Parts
     Months ago, it was revealed that the state’s first small modular nuclear reactor would not be built in Southwest Virginia. Local officials are now pushing for a study on the feasibility of placing a smaller nuclear generator, a microreactor, in Wise County, Virginia.
     On Tuesday, a one hundred-thousand-dollar grant that would fund such a study was approved by the GO Virginia Region 1 Council which is an economic development initiative that covers Southwest Virginia.
     Microreactors are compact nuclear reactors that are small enough to be transported by truck. Most of the designs would produce up to twenty megawatts of thermal energy that could be utilized directly as heat or converted to electric power, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy. A small modular nuclear reactor, or SMR, ranges from fifty to three hundred megawatts.
     Currently, there are no microreactors operating in the U.S. Russia has several operating microreactors, according to the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), one of seventeen national labs in the U.S. Department of Energy
    The INL says on its website that new microreactor designs equipped with advanced technologies are being developed by several organizations and companies. Demonstrations of these new microreactors are expected to be held within the next seven years.
     Duane Miller is the executive director of the LENOWISCO Planning District Commission. He told the GO Virginia council last Tuesday that microreactor technology has been used in submarines and aircraft carriers for the last seventy years.
     LENOWISCO is currently assisting the county in its effort because the project could be significant to the region, according to Miller. He went on to say that the broader region of interest for the project is Lee, Wise, Scott and Dickenson counties and the city of Norton.
     After the GO Virginia meeting, Miller claimed that microreactors could provide a stable and consistent power supply to rural areas like Southwest Virginia. This would reduce dependence on “intermittent” sources such as solar or wind power while acting as a recruitment tool for economic sectors that use a lot of energy.
     Miller added that “It is our hope that when completed, this project funded by GO Virginia will assist the region on the best path to move forward.” Microreactors can be designed to assist with powering critical infrastructure like hospitals, universities and water treatment facilities, he said. This would ensure that these services remain operational in rural areas.
     The proposed study would identify and analyze a prospective site for a microreactor and the infrastructure that would be required, according to the grant application. It would also detail the baseload power capabilities and help identify customers such as data centers, the application states.
     Mike Hatfield is the Wise County’s administrator. He said that his county is interested in the possibility of a microreactor because it “wants to remain an energy leader for Virginia.” The county is reviewing all current forms of energy generation including gas, solar, wind, hydrogen and nuclear, according to Hatfield. He went on to say that the county would likely use a microreactor to provide energy to locations that can’t get efficient energy from the local power grid, such as a data center.

GO Virginia

Please read Part 2 next