Wyoming awarded BWXT $100 million last year to build a $500 million nuclear fuel plant in Gillette, fully expecting the company would be its own primary customer — at least for now.
That assumption changed Tuesday when BWXT announced during the Next Frontier Energy Summit in Laramie that
it has already lined up a buyer for its patented TRISO (tri-structural isotropic) nuclear fuel.
California-based Kairos Power, which has recently broken ground on a fluoride salt-cooled nuclear plant in Tennessee, is expected to become one of the first customers for the Gillette nuclear fuel facility once it comes online.
The timeline calls for breaking ground sometime in 2028, and for the plant to be operational sometime in 2030 or 2031.
While no earth is moving now, many things are happening behind the scenes. The company is looking to select and buy a site in the Gillette area and navigating a multi-layered permitting process.
Wyoming and BWXT are simultaneously in contract negotiations, Wyoming Energy Authority Executive Director Rob Creager told Cowboy State Daily.
“We’re making sure what our participation is going to look like,” he said. “And all the details of the contract.”
Creager was over the moon about BWXT Vice President of Commercial Microreactor Products Erik Nygaard’s announcement about Kairos.
“When we did our evaluation of that grant, an end user like Kairos wasn’t a thing,” he said. “BWXT was just going to make this fuel themselves.
"Now you’re already seeing that market attraction to other vendors wanting that fuel. So that facility in Gillette will service more than just BWXT, which is exactly what we wanted.”
That’s a strong investment signal that makes him feel that Wyoming has bet on the right horse in the nuclear race., Creager added.
Jobs, Ripple Effects Expected
BWXT’s plant in Gillette will start with 200 employees, Nygaard said. But it’s not expected to remain there.
At its plant in Lynchburg, Virginia, BWXT started with 300 employees, Nygaard said, but today it employs 2,500.
“Once you have a licensed nuclear facility, it’s a very powerful asset to try to build a business around,” Nygaard said.
So he expects employment figures to grow in time and become much larger than the starting figure.
With that growth will come other positive ripple effects for the economy.
It’s not unlikely that BWXT will attract other businesses around it, Kairos Vice President of Fuels and Materials Micah Hackett told Cowboy State Daily.
“It brings opportunity,” he said. “Certainly, there are others in the fuel supply chain that may see the site and the adjacent land that’s available and see the opportunity that exists there.”
Creager also indicated Wyoming would be proactive when it comes to approaching other companies that might be a fit for the BWXT development in Gillette.
“One of the things I always joke about is like, nuclear facilities have lots of HVAC systems in there, right?” Nygaard said. “So, the HVAC businesses and Gillette should really be excited about BWXT coming.”
HVAC is used to ensure there’s no dust or other contaminants affecting the production of the fuel.
Fierce Competition Prompted $100M Grant
One of the common questions Creager fields is people asking why BWXT needed a $100 million grant to build its plant in Wyoming.
It’s less about what BWXT needed and more about what Wyoming needed to do to compete, Creager said.
“To think that the state of Wyoming is the only state doing this is just not accurate,” he said. “I mean, we look at the state of Texas, for example. They’ve set up a nuclear-only fund of $350 million. They’re trying to catch up to the point to what we’re doing right now.”
Creager doesn’t believe there will be dozens of nuclear fuel facilities popping up all over the country. He expects to see only a handful.
“So, if we miss out on this conversion opportunity, we might not get that chance again,” he said. “And so what do we do at that point again, understanding our uranium legacy in the state of Wyoming?”
While it is a lot of money, the potential return on investment is a much larger sum and can potentially carry the state’s energy generations into the future.
“There are questions about whether the state should be involved in this,” Creager said. “But when you look at our No. 1 sector, and we’ve heard all day about jobs and revenue, we have to drive forward on things like this, in our opinion.”
Making The Most Of The Nuclear Moment
Wyoming recently lost out on one nuclear energy company, Radiant Energy, which ultimately decided to go Tennessee instead.
Radiant had planned to build a microreactor manufacturing facility in the Natrona County town of Bar Nunn but ultimately said there was too much regulatory uncertainty in Wyoming.
Nygaard said BWXT has had a much different experience, and he believes that is because the two companies had much different approaches.
“We weren’t showing up with a project,” he said. “We were showing up asking people, ‘What can you make and how?’”
That started a back-and-forth dialogue about all the ins and outs of producing nuclear fuel from enriched uranium.
It was also a chance to highlight certain things about BWXT’s processes, such as the fact there’s no fission at the fuel manufacturing plant involved at all.
“The type of waste this facility would create is basically classified as low-level waste, more or less equivalent to radioactive waste that hospitals create,” Nygaard said. “It’s very benign, and it gets shipped through the interstate compact.”
That was a contributing factor, Creager believes, to public comments collected on BWXT’s project as part of the grant processing being 90% positive.
BWXT has also been manufacturing TRISO fuel at its Lynchburg facility for more than 20 years.
That means its procedures are already well characterized and understood, which should help them speed through permitting processes.
Meanwhile, the welcoming attitude from Wyoming officials is making all the difference, Nygaard added.
“We’re trying to do big, hard ambitious things,” he said. “Which is basically standing up an entirely new commercial fuel manufacturing product line. We can’t do it alone.
"The support of the state, the community and partners like Kairos reduces the risk and increases the chances that we’ll actually be successful.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
