Chemicals giant exploring construction of eight nuclear ‘microreactors’ to power Wyoming plant

The companies said they have been collaborating since September 2023 on the idea of integrating BWXT’s advanced nuclear reactor (BANR) for electricity and industrial processing at Tata Chemicals North America’s Green River, Wyoming site.

The letter of intent signals an expansion of the collaboration to include the development of commercial terms and conditions to conditionally purchase BANR microreactors from BWXT. They could be deployed by the early 2030s. However, the companies still need to agree on the technical and economic considerations required to turn conditional reactor purchase agreements into an energy purchase agreement.

Tata Chemicals North America mines trona ore and uses it to produce soda ash at the Wyoming plant. Soda ash is used in glass manufacturing as well as in many other products such as powdered detergents and rechargeable batteries.

The company said that the construction of microreactors would deliver on-demand, carbon-free power and process heat to the plant.

The letter of intent marks the latest in a series of agreements that are seeing companies with power-intensive manufacturing plants or data centres explore the option of small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). SMRs have been touted as a means of generating low-carbon energy and in theory should be cheaper and faster to build than conventional nuclear power plants.

However, rising costs associated with an unproven technology, combined with regulatory hurdles, have so far made the construction of new commercial-scale SMRs difficult.

Co-locating SMRs with power-hungry industrial operations to provide power to the off-take may yet provide a path forward for SMR projects. Earlier this year, Google announced that it has signed a corporate agreement to buy energy from multiple SMRs to be developed by Kairos Power.

In September, US tech firm Oracle also revealed plans to build a gigawatt-scale data centre, to be powered by three small SMRs.