Bill Gates has spent decades lecturing Americans about how they should live.
Now the billionaire is using a small community as his personal testing ground.
And Bill Gates unleashed one scary nuclear experiment on a tiny Wyoming town.
Gates picked Kemmerer Wyoming for his TerraPower nuclear experiment
Bill Gates founded TerraPower in 2006 and spent years searching for somewhere to build his experimental Natrium nuclear reactor.
He settled on Kemmerer, Wyoming, population 2,000, tucked in the state's southwestern corner where a coal plant just shut down.
Patrick Lawien lives in Casper, about 290 miles away, and sees exactly what Gates is doing.
"It sounds like maybe it's a safer bet to put it in the least populated state, maybe because they'll get less backlash, less people fighting it, but also because if something does go wrong, it's not in a highly populated place," Lawien told the Daily Mail.
Gates isn't building this reactor in Seattle or San Francisco where his wealthy friends live.
Steve Helling, 72, has lived in Wyoming for decades and watched Gates sell state leaders on promises of jobs and clean energy.
"Wyoming is being used as a guinea pig for this nuclear experiment," Helling said.
The missing safety feature that has nuclear experts calling it "Cowboy Chernobyl"
Every nuclear plant in America has a thick concrete containment dome to trap radioactive material inside if the reactor melts down.
Gates decided his Natrium reactor doesn't need one.
TerraPower wants to use "functional containment" instead – a maze of internal barriers engineered into the reactor itself.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission admitted in its safety evaluation that it "did not come to a final determination of the adequacy and acceptability of functional containment performance due to the preliminary nature of the design and analysis."
They're approving construction before they even know if Gates's containment system works.
Dr. Edwin Lyman from the Union of Concerned Scientists warned what happens if functional containment fails after construction starts.
"Even if the NRC determines later that the functional containment is inadequate, it would be utterly impractical to retrofit the design and build a physical containment after construction has begun," Lyman stated.
He gave Gates's reactor a nickname that captures what Wyoming residents face: "The potential for rapid power excursions and the lack of a real containment make the Kemmerer plant a true 'Cowboy Chernobyl.'"
Gates's liquid sodium coolant catches fire and explodes
The Natrium reactor doesn't just skip the containment dome.
It replaces water cooling with liquid sodium.
Gates claims sodium is safer because it won't boil away like water at the reactor's 350-degree Celsius operating temperature.
What Gates won't tell you is what sodium does when things go wrong.
Liquid sodium catches fire when exposed to air and explodes on contact with water, producing hydrogen gas that triggers devastating explosions.
Japan's Monju reactor learned this in 1995 when sodium leaked and ignited.
"Its liquid sodium coolant can catch fire, and the reactor has inherent instabilities that could lead to a rapid and uncontrolled increase in power, causing damage to the reactor's hot and highly radioactive nuclear fuel," Lyman explained.
Gates has convinced himself his design eliminates these risks.
Wyoming residents two hours downwind refuse to bet their lives on a billionaire's confidence.
Wyoming residents fear nuclear waste from Gates's experimental reactor
Steve Helling asks the question nobody in state government wants to answer.
"Wyoming has everything I could want, beauty, clean air, clean water, wildlife, abundant natural resources," Helling said. "And I wonder, why would the people of Wyoming risk it all for an experimental nuclear power plant?"
The United States still doesn't have a permanent storage solution for nuclear waste, and decommissioning costs run into the billions.
But Gates wants Wyoming to take that risk for him.
"Of course, Bill Gates was a big part of this. He actually came to Wyoming in support of this experimental plant," Helling recalled. "And I wondered to myself, with regard to Mr. Gates, how much money is enough?"
The NRC is expected to issue a construction permit this month.
TerraPower still needs a separate operating license before the reactor can run, with a target date of 2030.
That gives Wyoming about five years to hope Gates got the engineering right on his first-of-its-kind reactor with no containment dome and explosive liquid sodium coolant.
And if he got it wrong, Kemmerer will be the first to find out.
Sources:
- James Cirrone, "Tiny city of just 2,000 residents are fearful as Bill Gates-backed nuclear plant dubbed 'Cowboy Chernobyl' is built on their doorstep," Daily Mail, January 10, 2026.
- Union of Concerned Scientists, "Rushed Approval of Experimental Nuclear Reactor Imperils Health, Environment," December 2, 2025.
- Nuclear Regulatory Commission, "NRC Completes Final Safety Evaluation For Construction Of TerraPower's Natrium Nuclear Project," December 1, 2025.
- Cowboy State Daily, "TerraPower's Kemmerer Nuclear Plant Clears Key Regulatory Hurdle A Month Early," December 2, 2025.
- Wyoming Public Media, "TerraPower clears another federal nuclear permit hurdle," December 2, 2025.
