One of the companies leading the charge to deploy safer, smaller, faster-to-build nuclear reactors is hoping to find a site for one in Kansas.
TerraPower, cofounded by former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, began construction last month on its first power plant of this kind in southwest Wyoming as a $4 billion demonstration project cofunded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Now it is interested in building one in Kansas to generate power in utility company Evergy’s service area.
TerraPower, Evergy and state officials announced this week that they have signed a memorandum of understanding to explore the prospects. They issued a news release featuring enthusiastic quotes from Democratic Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly and both of the state’s Republican U.S. senators.
“We need to explore all available sources to power the future of our great state,” Kelly said.
“Nuclear energy is the way of the future,” U.S. Senator Roger Marshall said.
But the reaction from clean energy advocates in Kansas is mixed. The news sparked some interest in emissions-free power generation, but also concern about the price tag and whether the project would attract more data centers to the region with significant needs for electricity and water. Kansas faces water sustainability challenges.
“ We want to make sure that the plans we’re making for the clean energy future are affordable,” said Dorothy Barnett, executive director of the Climate + Energy Project. “ I am increasingly concerned for our friends and neighbors who are struggling to pay their utility bills.”
Kansas regulators signed off on $128 million in rate hikes for Evergy this week.
The Sierra Club said Kansas has financially smarter options for powering its economy.
“We’ve got plenty of roofs here in Kansas,” said Zack Pistora, state director for the Sierra Club in Kansas. “Or backyards that could say, ‘Hey, we’ll be glad to lease our roof or our land for solar, Evergy. You can pay us instead of paying this out-of-state company.’”
Looking for potential sites in Kansas
An official with the Kansas Department of Commerce said regional power demand is projected to more than double over the next decade. That’s according to the regional grid operator, the Southwest Power Pool.
“We need to be ready for this,” said Paul Hughes, the department’s lead on matters involving megaprojects. “And I’m not saying it has to be this (nuclear) project, but we do need to act in ensuring that Kansas isn’t effectively blocked out of future opportunities because of the availability or unavailability of power in the state.”
Asked why TerraPower is specifically considering Kansas, Hughes noted that Evergy already has experience with nuclear energy. It owns Wolf Creek Nuclear Generating Station 60 miles south of Topeka, the state’s only nuclear plant. By contrast, some states don’t have nuclear power and some have restrictions or outright bans.
This fall Kansas State University launched a nuclear engineering program.
It’s not yet clear where in Kansas TerraPower would want to build a nuclear reactor. The company will need to consider proximity to transmission lines and to a workforce. It will also need to find communities interested in the project, and will need to ensure that any potential sites have stable underground geology.
Hughes said the state commerce department will help facilitate the discussions.
“We can help communities articulate their interest in the project or disinterest in the project,” he said.
Communities that aren’t interested will be passed over for consideration, he said.
“These (projects) just don’t go well when you try to force feed them into a community — and all parties to this agreement understand that,” Hughes said.
Advanced nuclear reactors and TerraPower
For decades, logistics and expenses have held nuclear energy back. Conventional nuclear plants not only have high price tags but also a propensity to greatly exceed their budgets and to take longer than expected to build.
Modular advanced nuclear designs are smaller than conventional plants and represent a potential industry turning point that is decades in the making. The companies developing them say they will be safer and faster to build.
However, none of these designs are yet in commercial operation in the U.S.
The Trump administration has thrown its weight behind advanced nuclear power, drawing a mix of praise and criticism. This spring it unveiled executive orders and plans to reconsider some regulations, press for approval of projects, and use the controversial Department of Government Efficiency to overhaul the nation’s independent regulator of nuclear energy.
Kansas officials said they’re aware of the development.
“ It is on our radar,” Hughes said. “We want to make sure that (Kansas is) doing this safely and that’s what we’ll do.”
TerraPower expects its Wyoming project to come online this decade. The company says that the project will create 1,600 jobs during peak construction, after which about 250 jobs will remain at the site for day-to-day operations.
The company’s design, the Natrium reactor, uses liquid sodium rather than water to envelop uranium fuel. This liquid has a far higher boiling point – 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit – which the company says adds to the reactor’s safety.
The reactor heats the liquid sodium, which in turn heats pipes full of molten salt. The pipes carry the molten salt to a storage tank that serves as a power battery. The salt heats tubes of water, creating pressurized steam. The steam turns a turbine to generate electricity. The salt then cycles back to the reactor area to be heated up again.
The battery represents a key departure from a conventional plant such as Evergy’s Wolf Creek. The facility would store the heated molten salt in a tank and draw upon it as needed to meet demand.
Wolf Creek can’t adjust its output to the ebb and flow of electricity demand or to account for sunny and windy weather generating more from solar and wind farms.
What do clean energy advocates think?
Barnett, from the Climate and Energy Project, wants to hear more details.
Generating electricity without pumping out greenhouse gases is “one of the most important things as we think about our climate future,” she said.
Additionally, her organization wants power plants to pair well with renewable energy and is interested in the efforts of advanced nuclear designs to do that.
But she’s skeptical because many people already struggle to pay their utility bills and Evergy not only got the greenlight this week from Kansas regulators for $128 million in rate hikes, it also got permission this summer to build and co-own two new natural gas-burning power plants.
“ At what point is it just too expensive for us to just keep having Evergy build and build?” Barnett said.
The Wyoming project suggests that an advanced nuclear facility would cost billions.
Also, she has questions about potential indirect effects. For example, even if the reactor doesn’t require much water because it uses liquid sodium as a coolant, data centers do. This means the reactor’s impact on water use in Kansas could depend on how the power gets used.
Pistora, with the Sierra Club in Kansas, said Evergy and TerraPower will need to answer a slew of pressing questions.
“Does this make economic sense from a cost and benefit standpoint?” he asked. “What about the water use? What about the (nuclear) waste disposal? … Where are we going to get this nuclear material and where’s it going to be mined?”
A few utility-scale battery projects have been proposed in Kansas, Pistora said, which could help store energy from renewable sources or existing fossil fuel plants for when the power is needed.
Like Barnett, he pointed to the recent approval of Evergy’s requests to hike its rates and to build new natural gas power plants.
“ Now we’re hearing about nuclear, which is the most expensive power out there,” he said. “Why are we going for these big-ticket, capital-intensive, expensive energy projects?”
Celia Llopis-Jepsen is the environment reporter for the Kansas News Service and host of the environmental podcast Up From Dust. You can follow her on Bluesky or email her at celia (at) kcur (dot) org.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy.
