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Tackling our most pressing challenges

State-of-the-Art R&D

TerraPower has proven it is serious about bringing advanced nuclear technologies to market. Our team is developing new ways to use nuclear science to provide abundant, clean energy and medical isotopes that will enhance human health.

TerraPower has invested in high-tech laboratories to prove out its concepts and partnered with America’s national laboratories, research universities and utilities. After more than a decade of work, TerraPower leads a team that is working to demonstrate advanced nuclear technologies in the United States.

Advanced Research and Testing Facilities

Starting with 10,000 square feet, TerraPower expanded to 65,000 square feet of facilities in 2019. The expansion accommodates growth in needed testing capabilities to demonstrate key components and physical properties of materials.

Early on, TerraPower decided to build its laboratories, where advanced design components and material properties can be tested. The Everett and Bellevue laboratories are testing, proving, and improving crucial elements of TerraPower’s reactor designs. For the Natrium™ reactor, this includes extensive testing of fuel handling and how salt and sodium interface. For the Molten Chloride Fast Reactor (MCFR) technology, this includes micro-loop and fully pumped isothermal loops that prove out the molten salt fuel and coolant interactions in the core.

TerraPower’s cutting-edge facilities have also allowed engineers to expand their horizons, looking at new ways to fully leverage nuclear science – and not just in energy. The TerraPower team is developing advanced radioisotope generators that will be able to extract potentially life-saving materials from radioactive elements and identifying new uses for the high heat produced by advanced reactors to unlock unprecedented carbon-reduction opportunities and carbon-conversion technologies.

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Cutting-edge Possibilities

Medical Isotopes

Medical research and innovation are underway with the TerraPower Isotopes® (TPI™) program, focused on separating and processing Thorium-229 into Actinium-225, which may improve cancer treatments by destroying targeted cancer cells with minimum damage to healthy cells.

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Process Heat

TerraPower has tested technologies that can convert coal into high-value products suitable for transportation fuels, chemical industry feedstock and even advanced materials like carbon fiber.

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Advanced Reactor Modeling Interface

Open-source software can help improve advanced reactor designs and lay the foundation for a strong regulatory basis for new reactors. TerraPower’s open-source software offers a framework that will benefit from contributors who are in need of better automation tools and expressive reactor frameworks.

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