EDUCATORS’ PERSPECTIVE
Power plant seen from US Highway 30, just west of Kemmerer, Wyoming.
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US postage stamp commemorating President Dwight Eisenhower’ s“ Atoms for Peace” speech, which he addressed to the United Nations in 1953.
Field crew at the Kemmerer Coal Company Mine in Kemmerer, Wyoming, circa 1975.
whose most radical elements vowed to shut down the entire nuclear power industry.
Mahaffey notes a popular saying among nuclear engineers:“ If the first use of gasoline had been to make napalm, we’ d all be driving electric cars now.” Nuclear power’ s checkered past threatened to blow up the entire“ Atoms for Peace” movement. While radical protesters failed to terminate nuclear energy production, they were able to force it into a 30-year coma. In 2007, the industry began to stir from its comatose state when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission received several applications for new nuclear power plants.
The need to reduce carbon emissions contrasted sharply with the increased energy demands of developing nations, as well as the massive increase in demand from cryptocurrency mining and artificial intelligence( AI). It soon became clear that the carbon-free energy provided by solar panels and wind turbines was not sufficient to meet the gap in demand. However, carbon-free nuclear power could reliably produce massive amounts of energy and close the gap significantly. As this realization dawned on climate activists, many of them changed their minds about nuclear power and turned from protesting the industry to actively promoting nuclear power as part of the solution to a clean energy environment.
Kemmerer, facing the harsh realities of a carbon-free energy world, recognized an opportunity to turn things around with the embrace of nuclear power generation. City officials aggressively lobbied Terra- Power, a company founded by Bill Gates, to build their first Natrium reactor near the Naughton Power Plant site. Former mayor William Thek and city administrator Brian Muir reached out to TerraPower with a clear message,“ We want you and we need you” in Kemmerer.
Kemmerer was an ideal location for TerraPower because it already had the
12 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Spring 2025 | www. MoAF. org