On the Friday, August 14, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast: A Wyoming coal town is becoming the testing ground for a revolutionary nuclear plant backed by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Supporters see a vital economic lifeline, but critics worry about safety and long-term nuclear waste. USA TODAY National Correspondent Trevor Hughes visited Kemmerer to explore how this project could redefine American energy.
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Dana Taylor:
For generations, Kemmerer has depended on coal. Now with its mining future uncertain, the town is becoming the testing ground for a very different vision of American energy. Just outside Kemmerer, workers are building a first of its kind nuclear power plant backed by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Supporters see an economic lifeline, critics see unanswered questions like whether or not these plants will be safe. But unlike Vegas, what happens in Kemmerer won’t stay in Kemmerer. Instead, it could help determine whether a new generation of nuclear reactors takes hold across the country. Hello, and welcome to USA TODAY’s The Excerpt. I’m Dana Taylor. Today is Friday, August 14th, 2026. USA TODAY national correspondent Trevor Hughes visited Kemmerer and toured the project site and joins me now to talk about what he saw on the ground. Trevor, it’s good to have you here.
Trevor Hughes:
Glad to be here.
Dana Taylor:
Trevor, paint a picture of Kemmerer for us. What kind of place is it and what stuck out to you about watching this long-time coal community grapple with the possibility of becoming the birthplace of a new nuclear industry?
Trevor Hughes:
I mean, the first thing to know is that Wyoming is our least populated state. It is very sparse. There’s not a lot of folks who live there. And so what happens to one or two people matters dramatically because they are so closely linked to each other. And for generations, Wyoming has really been closely linked to resource extraction, coal, natural gas. Kemmerer is a small town in a state that doesn’t have a lot of people. It’s the birthplace of JCPenney. There’s a really good coffee shop there. There’s a really fun pizza place there. But it’s one of those towns that’s kind of in the middle of nowhere, and it’s there largely because of the coal mines. If the coal mines are going to close down, however, it really causes concern for the folks who live there about what their future looks like.
Dana Taylor:
Coal has shaped not just Kemmerer’s economy, but its identity. What would the decline of the mines in the nearby power plant mean for the people who’ve built their lives around them?
Trevor Hughes:
Yeah, you have to understand that a coal mine pays well. These are jobs that are skilled. These are skilled labor jobs. These are not nuclear science jobs, but they are jobs in which someone with a high school education can work as a heavy equipment operator and earn a very good living for their family, especially in a state like Wyoming where the cost of living is low. And so the loss of these really good paying jobs represents a significant blow to this area because so many families have built their lives, their houses, everything around those solid and stable jobs from the coal mines.
Dana Taylor:
I know that you met residents who are already trying to imagine what comes next, including a longtime mine employee who opened a soda shop. What did those conversations reveal about how people are preparing for this transition?
Trevor Hughes:
There’s a lot of frustration because Wyoming has a lot of coal. The coal mines are closing not because they’re running out of coal, but because we as a society are moving away from coal in general as a fuel. And so there’s a lot of frustration from folks who say they don’t really understand why it is that you’re going to turn your back on such a reliable, affordable form of power generation that has, I mean, literally powered America for generations. And so there are people who are looking for the next big thing, the next thing that helps keep them going. Because they have been so focused on this coal mine and power plant for so many years, it really becomes a question of, “Well, how do we replace those jobs with something else?”
Dana Taylor:
Trevor, what exactly is TerraPower building outside Kemmerer and how is its Natrium reactor different from the traditional nuclear plants that most Americans may picture?
Trevor Hughes:
What they’re building is a small nuclear reactor. I think many Americans, if you’ve seen a nuclear power plant, you’re familiar with sort of these hulking structures, these big cooling towers, these big massive concrete domes that contain the reactor in case of a meltdown. Natrium’s project is small. It’s about half the size of a normal reactor, and it’s designed to operate at low pressure because it doesn’t use high pressure steam, it actually uses molten sodium metal. Natrium is an old word for sodium. And so this power plant is about half the size. And because it operates at a lower pressure, the idea is that they are much quicker to build, they’re much cheaper to build, they’re much easier to permit. And so the backers really envision seeing hundreds of these around the country and potentially around the world in the coming decades.
Dana Taylor:
TerraPower argues that this design addresses some of the cost and safety challenges that have plagued traditional nuclear projects. What are the company’s biggest claims and how much of the technology has actually been proven?
Trevor Hughes:
The big difference here is the construction timeline, which is five years versus 10 years. To build a traditional nuclear power plant in this country takes a decade, which is a really long time for a construction project, which means costs escalate and it becomes harder and harder to justify those projects compared to something like solar and wind, which is frankly, much faster to build. Natrium hopes to get these projects up and running within maybe five years. And the idea is that you identify a need, you identify a location, and you can build it very quickly with far less concrete, with far less of the sort of surrounding technology that traditional nuclear power plants have. Now the technology itself isn’t new. We’ve used them on submarines in the past, but this is a unique and novel approach to use this small-scale nuclear power plant for civilian uses in the middle of the country.
Dana Taylor:
The project is already bringing construction crews and new business into town. What did that economic boom look like on the ground and how much of it is expected to last once construction ends?
Trevor Hughes:
Well, I’ll tell you, I was out there and couldn’t get a hotel room. Hotel rooms are full. This is a town which is accustomed to having lots of hunters come in during hunting season, so there’s actually quite a lot of hotel rooms for such a small area, but the hotels are booked up. The apartments are booked up. I talked to an apartment cleaner who’s busier than ever. There are lines at the restaurants, places that you wouldn’t normally have to wait to get a coffee, you got to wait to get coffee. And so you can see in the town that there is money flowing in in a way that has not been in years. I think folks have felt that Kemmerer was kind of in a decline. The hospital is offering fewer services than it used to. And so there was a frustration that their time was sort of dwindling away. And this project really does seem to be injecting a lot of new energy and a lot of new money into town. Bill Gates has visited himself multiple times.
Dana Taylor:
You found a community that’s deeply divided. What are supporters hoping the plant will deliver and what fears or frustrations are driving the opposition?
Trevor Hughes:
Well, I think if you’re a supporter of this project, the fact that Bill Gates, one of the richest people in the world, comes to your town and says, “This is where I’m staking my claim.” I think there’s a lot of pride in that. This is a community that has long been a source of power. All that coal that’s been mined has turned into electricity. And so this is a community that takes very seriously that mission to power America. And so people are very pleased to get the idea that they would be an international leader, that people might come from all over the world to see this project and to say, “Yes, this is a safe project. Yes, this is an effective project. We would welcome this in our community as well.” The folks who are opposed have a lot of concerns, and nuclear power in this country has been fraught with controversy for decades.
People remember Three Mile Island, they remember Chernobyl. And so there is an uphill battle in terms of public information. Some of the folks I talk to are just sort of deeply skeptical of why someone like Bill Gates would pick their town. They’re deeply skeptical as to why it would be in the middle of nowhere, Wyoming. And they have concerns about the nuclear waste and what that could mean for environmental implications decades down the road.
Dana Taylor:
We’ve talked about this project being backed by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, but taxpayers are providing roughly $2 billion in assistance. How has that public investment become a point of debate?
Trevor Hughes:
I think there’s some folks who look at Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and say, “These guys are super rich. Why do they need taxpayer assistance?” I would say that this is actually a project that got started under the Obama administration. There has been a push for a very long time for the American government to support nuclear power as a transition into the green energy economy. Nuclear power is considered a carbon-free power source like solar and like wind, but not like coal. And so the federal government has been pushing this project as a way of demonstrating that this is something that can get done. And the idea is that this becomes faster and easier to build once you’ve made a few of them. It scales up. And so the American taxpayers are helping jumpstart that research in the way that we have jumpstarted research to the moon, to under the oceans, all that kind of thing.
Dana Taylor:
The Trump administration wants projects like this one to help power data centers, manufacturing, other growing energy demands. Critics warn that moving too quickly could come at the expense of safety and security and also responsible handling of nuclear waste. What specifically concerns them and how do supporters respond?
Trevor Hughes:
The concern from some of the critics is particularly about nuclear safety, that nuclear may have a fairly good track record of safety, but when things go bad, they go bad. There’s a joke out here in the West that no one has ever had to clean up a spill of sunshine. And so there’s a concern that we may have decades of nuclear waste sitting on these sites because there is no centralized waste repository in this country. So any nuclear waste we generate kind of just sits around. The other concern is that why are we investing in this technology, which is kind of unproven at a time when we know solar and wind are effective sources of generation, especially when it’s daytime and when it’s windy, but coupled with batteries, why not invest in that kind of technology which is far less environmentally risky?
The backers would say that unlike solar and wind, nuclear power is reliable. It generates power every single day. It’s called base load power. It’s the thing that makes sure the lights come on every single time, regardless of whether it’s sunny outside. Now, obviously there have been advances in battery technology and storage like that, but we as a country still depend heavily on coal and nuclear power, existing nuclear power plants for that base load power.
Dana Taylor:
Well, since the United States still has no permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel, what would ultimately happen to the waste produced in Kemmerer?
Trevor Hughes:
Well, that’s the thing is that there may be a time when we develop a centralized waste repository. But as best as anyone knows right now, the spent fuel rods from the Natrium project, and it will have to be refueled every two years, they will essentially remain on site, under guard obviously, secure so that no one steals them and builds a dirty bomb. But it is a concern about what are we doing with this radioactive waste that we will generate more of as a result of this project.
Dana Taylor:
TerraPower’s CEO told you this quote, “Mark a whole new era of nuclear energy.” Trevor, what will have to happen in Kemmerer before we know whether this project is truly a model for the country and what would it mean for the town if that promise falls short?
Trevor Hughes:
I think where the rubber hits the road, this project is being built in the site of a former coal-fired power plant that is shutting down. It’s switching over to natural gas. And so if this project can be built on time and generate power in a safe and reliable way, I think that would be considered a real win because the Trump administration is very much pushing projects like this to create that reliable base load that we can scale up very rapidly, that is less susceptible to environmental concerns, that is less susceptible to war. And so I think there’s a real hope in Kemmerer that this project can give the project itself the attention it needs, but also the town, bringing in folks from all over the world to see how this operates, to see the scale, because it is a surprisingly small footprint for anyone who has ever seen a nuclear power plant. It’s frankly, quite modest. And if you didn’t know what it was, I suspect that when you drive by it when it’s fully operational, you might not even know what it is.
Dana Taylor:
Trevor Hughes is a national correspondent for USA TODAY. It’s always good to have you with us, Trevor.
Trevor Hughes:
Absolutely.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our senior producer, Kaely Monahan, for her production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I’m Dana Taylor. I’ll be back Monday morning with another episode of USA TODAY’s The Excerpt.