Nuclear ambition

Jamie Thornock swerves to avoid the potholes that pock the streets of Kemmerer, Wyo. She could complain about the roads as a longtime resident, but as a member of the City Council, Thornock says this coal town in the state’s southwest corner doesn’t have the money right now to fix them. The water plant and sewer infrastructure need an upgrade, too.

Many of the 3,000 residents of Kemmerer— where J.C. Penney started his first department store—and nearby Diamondville work for (or have retired from) the coal mine and power plant just outside town. Thornock says Kemmerer has been affected by the push toward clean energy: Already one of the power plant’s three turbines has been converted from coal to natural gas. Thornock isn’t a big fan of the wind turbines half the size of the Eiffel Tower that have doubled in number since 2019, or the black solar panels blanketing the sage-covered hills.

Now, 4 miles outside town, a new form of power is moving in. In June, Bill Gates’ Bellevue, Wash.–based TerraPower broke ground on its planned Natrium nuclear power plant. The proposed state-of-the-art demonstration plant is one example of a U.S. resurgence of interest in nuclear power—a resurgence that is getting a push from Congress and the White House.

The Natrium plant still needs a building permit from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. If approved, the plant’s $4 billion price tag will dwarf Kemmerer’s $4 million annual budget. Thornock and other local residents are hopeful its construction will bring in needed revenue. Yet, like many Americans, they worry about the safety of a nearby nuclear reactor.

“A lot of houses, my kids’ included, are on well water,” said Thornock, referring to local concerns about drinking water contamination. Much of the reactor will be underground, where liquid sodium will cool the reactor and molten salt will store the energy.

Safety worries have long hampered the growth of nuclear power in the United States, especially after a reactor’s partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 and the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. Still, the global use of nuclear energy has increased substantially in the past four decades. Today, more than 440 reactors operate around the world, powering cities, suburbs, and submarines. The United States has 94 such reactors in operation, mostly built in the 1970s and ’80s, that provide about 18 percent of America’s electricity.

President Joe Biden, who set a goal of using 100 percent carbon-emissions-free energy (including nuclear) by 2035, on July 9 signed a bipartisan bill with a clunky name: the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act. It reduces license application fees and waiting times for building reactors, and it rewards competition in the nuclear industry. Some also argue the ADVANCE Act compromises safety in an attempt to catch up with China, which plans to add 150 nuclear reactors to its existing 55 in the next decade.

A deer wanders through the streets of Kemmerer. Associated Press/Photo by Natalie Behring

Thanks to its sparse population, Wyoming produces 12 times more energy than it consumes. When Scott MacNaughton, a pastor at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Lander, Wyo., moved to the state in 1974, he earned money in the summers by grading yellowcake in a uranium mine. That mine closed in the 1980s as nuclear power fell out of political favor.

Although he wonders about the wisdom of installing solar panels on Wyoming’s snow-swept hills, the technological creativity of energy production fascinates MacNaughton. “It’s God’s gift to mankind to actually use common sense and innovative scientific progress to both refine the production and use of fossil fuels as well as new fuels.”

Residents of Kemmerer acknowledge their dependence on the energy economy, but some still worry about the implications of a nuclear plant only 4 miles away.

At a local public meeting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in July, Thornock was one of several who spoke up to share their concerns. She wondered, will plant operators transport spent fuel through town on the railroad? And if there’s an emergency and the plant uses all its permitted water, will it drain the town’s drinking water supply?

Nuclear power advocates say past disasters served as lessons that ultimately improved safety, training, and safeguards at modern nuclear plants.

Chris Mulherin, director of ISCAST, an Australian organization promoting Christians in the sciences, thinks nuclear energy’s danger is mostly misunderstood. “It’s a bit of a magic thing with radiation, and we imagine power stations turning into nuclear explosions,” says Mulherin. He says the 2011 disaster in Fukushima, Japan, was less about the nuclear reactor and more about the tsunami and chaotic evacuations.

These days, nuclear energy’s popularity is growing on both sides of the political aisle. In a May survey, Pew Research Center found that at least 49 percent of Democrats and 67 percent of Republicans were in favor of expanding nuclear energy.

In the current pro-nuclear environment, investment in all aspects of nuclear energy could prove profitable. On July 31, Wyoming Rep. Donald Burkhart Jr. told his fellow state legislators that Wyoming could take in $4 billion a year just by storing nuclear waste.

Kemmerer resident Thornock is optimistic about a possible economic boost, but she still worries.

“I’m scared of the nuclear,” she said. “Kemmerer’s been a boom or bust town since I’ve known it. It seems like we’re getting into a boom, but are we going to go back to a bust?”