Inside TerraPower’s World-First Nuclear Project

The first thing a visitor to TerraPower’s site in Wyoming will notice is just how tiny the company’s rapidly rising Test and Fill Facility is rising up against the surrounding snow-dusted hillsides. 

From a distance, the steel beams look terribly tiny, like breakable matchsticks that a strong Wyoming wind could come along and blow away. 

But fragile looks are deceiving, and that becomes clear the closer one gets to the Test and Fill Facility (TFF), which will test, process and deliver liquid sodium to cool the nearby first-of-its-kind Natrium nuclear reactor.

The beams being used to build the unique structure are massive. The sizes vary, but they are 6 feet thick and up to 100 feet long, weighing as much as 90,000 pounds for each beam.

And the idea behind the Test and Fill Facility is also just as massive. It’s the start of an advanced reactor that radically rethinks nuclear power.