All winter long, Kemmerer has been performing what looks like an illusion.
By day, its hotel and motel parking lots appear empty of everything except ice. By nightfall, each lot has a truck in just about every spot, like a rabbit from a magician’s hat.
Most of those were clearly work trucks, though not all for one project.
The Naughton Plant was working on its switchover from coal to gas, while TerraPower was working on the Test and Fill facility at its nuclear power plant site.
Meanwhile, there were crews working on Lincoln County’s new Justice Center, as well as other projects.
Ballpark, there were around 1,000 construction workers in the area between all the projects.
It’s a small preview of what’s coming for this small community in southwestern Wyoming of about 3,000 people, where TerraPower is about to get nuclear for real.
The company has already begun the non-nuclear phase of its plant in Kemmerer, and now it has a construction permit in hand for the nuclear portion as well. Cowboy State Daily has been told the company will begin construction soon.
The nuclear plant will be one of the nation’s first advanced reactors and, at peak, TerraPower expects to bring as many as 1,600 workers to the site at once to build it.
Construction is projected to span a five-year period, with the plant expected to begin operating sometime in 2030.
For Kemmerer, that timeline turns this spring into a race to have enough housing in place before the nuclear plant begins operating so the town can keep as many permanent, high-paid workers as possible.
The outcome will determine how much of the boom Kemmerer keeps for itself, and how much it loses to other ZIP codes, making this construction season especially high stakes for a town that coal once built and nuclear energy is expected to sustain.
