NRC's Rushed Approval of Bill Gates' Experimental Wyoming Nuclear Reactor will Imperil Public Health, the Environment

[OKIsItJustMe]

https://www.ucs.org/about/news/rushed-approval-experimental-nuclear-reactor-imperils-health-environment

Published Dec 2, 2025

WASHINGTON (December 2, 2025)—Yesterday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced that its technical staff had completed an expedited safety review of an application to construct a $10 billion, 345-megawatt experimental sodium-cooled fast nuclear reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming. The Natrium reactor was designed by TerraPower, a company co-founded by billionaire Bill Gates, and is the recipient of a 50-50 cost-share grant (up to $2 billion) from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program.

Review of the construction permit application, which was submitted in March 2024, was originally scheduled to be completed in August 2026. However, as the result of political pressure from both Congress and the White House, NRC staff curtailed their review and issued a safety evaluation nine months early, conforming to the 18-month review timeline mandated by President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14300. If NRC commissioners approve the permit, as expected, then TerraPower will be able to begin construction of the reactor shortly thereafter.

…

“The NRC’s rush to complete the Kemmerer plant’s safety evaluation to meet the recklessly abbreviated schedule dictated by President Trump represents a complete abandonment of its obligation to protect public health, safety and the environment from catastrophic nuclear power plant accidents or terrorist attacks. The only way the staff could finish its review on such a short timeline is by sweeping serious unresolved safety issues under the rug or deferring consideration of them until TerraPower applies for an operating license, at which point it may be too late to correct any problems. Make no mistake, this type of reactor has major safety flaws compared to conventional nuclear reactors that comprise the operating fleet. Its liquid sodium coolant can catch fire, and the reactor has inherent instabilities that could lead to a rapid and uncontrolled increase in power, causing damage to the reactor’s hot and highly radioactive nuclear fuel.

“Of particular concern, NRC staff has assented to a design that lacks a physical containment structure to reduce the release of radioactive materials into the environment if a core melt occurs. TerraPower argues that the reactor has a so-called ‘functional’ containment that eliminates the need for a real containment structure. But the NRC staff plainly states that it ‘did not come to a final determination of the adequacy and acceptability of functional containment performance due to the preliminary nature of the design and analysis.’ Even if the NRC determines later that the functional containment is inadequate, it would be utterly impractical to retrofit the design and build a physical containment after construction has begun. The potential for rapid power excursions and the lack of a real containment make the Kemmerer plant a true ‘Cowboy Chernobyl.’”

[montanacowboy]

1. JHC

boys must have toys. Wonder how all the multi billionaires will like it when this thing shits radioactive poison all over the state of Wyoming.

[NNadir]

2. Right now vast amounts of mercury and lead from coal plants in Wyoming...

...are released daily without a peep out of antinukes.

Massive amounts of radioactive materials have leaked out of nuclear reactors without containment buildings, notably at Chernobyl.

How does the death toll at Chernobyl compare with the death toll from coal burning even in a sparsely populated state like Wyoming?

Care to estimate, to give a shit?

No?

Why am I not surprised?

One of the signature tells of an antinuke is elevating and event that is conceivable but unlikely over an event that happens every fucking day, as in Wyoming, the release of coal waste, not limited to heavy metals, whenever a coal plant there operates normally.

Poke an antinuke, any time anywhere, and one finds an apologist for fossil fuels.

There are no exceptions.

The planet is dying, soaked in dangerous fossil fuel waste, in flames, and still we hear antinukes shouting about radioactivity, with which the planet formed, exists and has always existed.

When I was a young man, I worked with radioactive ¹²⁵I and did so for a number of years. At that time it was the only tool for analyzing important biomarkers associated with serious human diseases, a now historical technique known as RIA, radioimmunoassay.. My work helped save lives. I am now an old man, proud of having has a radioactive thyroid gland four decades ago.

Nuclear energy saves lives on balance, millions of lives. It follows that on balance, antinukes whining about radioactivity in isolation kill people.

The risk associated with nuclear energy need not be zero to be lower than all other risks. It only has to be lower than all other risks, which it is.

Have an enjoyable holiday season and a nice day today.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. You're right of course.

There’s nothing wrong with “streamlining” the approval process for a “new and novel” reactor, based on a “preliminary … design.”

https://www.nrc.gov/


https://www.nrc.gov/sites/default/files/cdn/doc-collection-news/2025/25-063.pdf

…

“We’ve finished our technical work on the Kemmerer review a month ahead of our already accelerated schedule, as we aim to make licensing decisions for new, advanced reactors in no more than 18 months,” said Jeremy Groom, acting director of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. “We thank TerraPower for promptly addressing the agency’s questions to ensure safety and enable the NRC to efficiently process the application.”

…

[thought crime]

4. Nuclear industry requires subsidies

"50-50 cost-share grant (up to $2 billion) from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program"

[NickB79]

5. China's been running a sodium-cooled modular reactor for 2 years now

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFR-600

With plans to build large sodium-cooled reactors in the next few years.

https://interestingengineering.com/energy/china-nuclear-reactor-fast-neutron-design

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. Will we be using the same exact design?

Hundreds of “Gen II” reactors are operating all over the planet which have not suffered a catastrophic failure. If someone wanted to build a similar reactor but of a different design, shouldn’t it subject to a full approval process?

[NNadir]

7. Does it need a full '"approval process?" No, not really, unless we disapprove the coal plants.

Under what circumstances will any reactor in Wyoming be as dangerous as their coal plants killing people right now?

Whose "approval" does the antinuke community think it needs?

Ed Lie-mans?

Why are nuclear reactors the only power systems that require elaborate "approvals" when they are demonstrably safer than any coal, gas or petroleum planet on the planet.

Oh, I know, let me guess.

There is a bizarre calculus by which millions of deaths from fossil fuel waste are OK just so long as no one ever dies anywhere at any time from radiation exposure from a nuclear plant.

Correct?

[OKIsItJustMe]

8. False dichotomy

Give nuclear totally free rein or burn coal.

[NNadir]

9. One would need to understand something about what nuclear engineering is...

Last edited Wed Dec 24, 2025, 08:50 AM - Edit history (1)

...to understand what "free rein" in a nuclear program is.

In general, antinukes at the highest level, the Joe Romm types, Ed Lyman, Amory Lovins are incompetent to understand broad risk which is why they make absurd claims along the lines of there being a "false dichotomy."

There is no false dichotomy. The coal industry kills people whenever it operates normally. The nuclear industry has a spectacular record of operating with comparatively trivial loss of life which only take place in rare accidents.

The word "dichotomy" can be looked up in the dictionary if one is about comparison of two opposed things. To my mind, albeit understanding the limited purview of antinukes, who couldn't care less about fossil fuels, the generation of heat by fission and the the generation of heat by combustion of coal oil and gas are entirely different, opposed, things for generating heat that can be subject to contrast. Thus a real dichotomy exists if one is familiar with appropriate use if the English language.

The nuclear industry is 70 years old. I've been aware of it myself since before Chernobyl exploded. When I was a stupid uneducated antinuke, I read the delusional predictions put out by the dubiously named Union of Concerned Scientists on what a major release of the radioactive contents of a reactor would be. This theory unfortunately was tested by an unintentional experiment, Chernobyl. To the disappointment of antinukes everywhere, the experimentation results were quite different than the UCS's paranoid predictions.

Now we have modern antinukes dragging out further bull from UCS. Note that the shithead Ed Lyman who misses the opportunity to see a dichotomy because he doesn't give a fuck about coal death in Wyoming, says the Terrapower will be dangerous, not could be dangerous with even a shred of insight to the reactors design.

He is not a nuclear engineer nor does he have any role in the inappropriately vast array of documentation connected with reactor approval. He in fact fits the bill for evocation of the logical fallacy known as "appeal to authority" where the fallacy arises when the "authority" is competent in an area not connected to the things he purports to judge.

Antinukes do everything in their power to obstruct saving the world from climate collapse by the use of nuclear energy out of ignorance and irrational fear. It is not ethical to believe that it's OK for millions to die to prevent a few deaths from radiation exposure, deaths that are rarely observed while we never stop seeing fossil fuel related deaths on a vast scale.

In the 1950s and 1960s nuclear Cowboys built and ran nuclear reactors of a rather large array of types. They did so with minimal regulation and low human mortality. They built them, ran them, and took them apart. Modern nuclear engineers are going through their records to rediscover what might have been lost.

I support wise regulation for which what neither the nuclear industry nor the fossil fuel are subject to appropriate levels, vast overkill in the former, not merely enough in the latter. It will be a good day when the fossil fuel industry is required to show that its waste products will never kill anyone anywhere in any century here and beyond.

As for Ed Lyman and his head up the ass whining, I consider him an RFK Jr. equivalent, a person who asserts his ignorance to kill people. He can go fuck himself.

I wish you the happiest of holidays in this season.