A diner owner in Kemmerer, Wyoming has watched her lunch rush grow every year since construction crews started showing up in town. Whether that growth keeps going depends on unglamorous news like this: TerraPower just signed contracts with 12 more suppliers.
What TerraPower Locked Down, and Why It Matters
TerraPower added another link to its Natrium reactor supply chain, signing contracts with 12 new suppliers for the sodium-cooled fast reactor it’s building near Kemmerer. Merrick & Company picked up two of the awards. Mirion Technologies, BWXT Canada, Teledyne Brown Engineering, Marmen, Thermal Engineering International, Jensen Hughes, Boston Government Services, James Fisher Technologies, KROHNE Nuclear, and Valserve round out the list, together supplying radiation-monitoring gear, engineering services, and other specialized equipment the plant needs before startup.
A single missing part can stall a nuclear project for months. Pat Young, TerraPower’s senior vice president and Natrium project director, said each new contract “strengthens our network of qualified partners” and keeps construction milestones on track. Advanced reactors have stalled for decades because too few companies still build the specialized parts they need. Rebuilding that supplier base, contract by contract, is what turns a new reactor design into something crews can actually finish on schedule, which is exactly what a town banking its economic future on a construction timeline needs to see.
A Reactor Built for Sodium and Peak Power
Some of this week’s contracts support the Test and Fill Facility, a support building at the Kemmerer site designed to hold roughly 400,000 gallons of liquid sodium, used to test the reactor’s cooling systems and fill the vessel before startup. Molten sodium reacts violently with water and air, so handling it safely takes dedicated equipment most conventional reactors never needed. TerraPower already locked down reactor vessel components from Doosan Enerbility earlier this year, and this week’s awards fill in more of the picture.
The Natrium reactor runs at 345 megawatts, but a molten-salt storage system lets it push output to 500 megawatts when the grid needs it most, steady baseload power plus a burst of flexibility that solar and wind can’t offer alone.
Why the Calendar Matters as Much as the Megawatts
Non-nuclear construction at Kemmerer started back in 2024, and TerraPower still targets 2030 for completion. Meta has already committed to buying power from eight more Natrium plants through 2035, so proving this first one works on schedule matters well beyond Wyoming. Every supplier contract like this one shortens the odds of a delay pushing that timeline back, and for a town whose restaurants, hotels, and shops are staffed up for a construction boom, a timeline that holds is worth as much as the reactor itself. For the diner owner watching her lunch rush grow every year, that revenue disappears fast if a missing part pushes startup back by a year.
This is what real progress toward next-generation nuclear power usually looks like. It’s rarely one dramatic breakthrough. It’s dozens of unglamorous contracts locking a novel reactor design into something builders can finish on budget and on the calendar they promised. Read the original report from World Nuclear News.