Wyoming Just Cut a $100M Check for Nuclear Fuel — and Gillette Is Split on it

The original story by Dustin Bleizeffer for WyoFile.

Wyoming is putting serious money behind its nuclear future — and not everyone in coal country is cheering.

Gov. Mark Gordon on Friday awarded $100 million in state funds to BWXT to help launch a $500 million nuclear fuel manufacturing facility in Gillette. The Virginia-based company says it could start building next year, assuming it clears the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and it’s aiming to have the plant up and running by 2030.

The facility would make TRISO fuel, a type of “advanced” nuclear fuel that’s built around tiny enriched uranium pellets about the size of poppyseeds. Each pellet is wrapped in layers of carbon and ceramic materials designed to keep radioactive byproducts sealed inside, even at very high temperatures — one reason TRISO is often pitched as a safer, tougher alternative to traditional fuel.

BWXT is the first (and so far, only) recipient of Wyoming’s Large Project Energy Matching Fund, a program lawmakers created in 2024. The grants are administered through the Wyoming Energy Authority, but the governor has the final say on who gets paid.

Gordon framed the award as a bet on market reality, not political favoritism.

“This is about meeting real energy demand with real projects,” he said in a prepared statement, arguing the state is investing where private capital is already moving.

He also tied the BWXT project to President Donald Trump’s “energy independence” agenda, pitching domestic nuclear fuel capacity as a way to rely less on foreign supply chains.

According to a Wyoming Energy Authority analysis, the plant is expected to create around 200 permanent jobs and add about $100 million a year to Wyoming’s gross state product.

Still, in Gillette and across Campbell County, the award is landing like a political grenade.

Gillette City Councilman Jack Clary says there’s “significant opposition” locally — not just on health and environmental grounds, but on the basic economics of it. In his view, Wyoming is using fossil-fuel money to bankroll a private company that could eventually help push coal further to the margins.

“Down the road, coal will take a big hit because of this,” Clary said.

He also blasted the idea of state money flowing to an out-of-state company, calling it “insane.”

The politics inside local government have been messy too. The Gillette City Council voted 6–1 to send a letter supporting the grant (Clary was the lone no), while the county commissioners declined to back it as a board — though two commissioners reportedly sent their own supportive letter anyway.

This BWXT plan is Wyoming’s latest step into the “advanced nuclear” push — and it’s not the first to stir controversy.

• TerraPower’s Natrium reactor is already seeing construction activity near Kemmerer, backed by a $2 billion commitment from the US Department of Energy.
• Radiant Industries had proposed building a microreactor manufacturing plant in Natrona County — but the project became politically toxic, in part because it would have involved storing spent nuclear fuel. Radiant eventually pulled out and shifted plans to Tennessee.

BWXT’s project does not include storing spent fuel waste — but Clary worries that could change down the line, especially if Wyoming’s long-running fight over importing and storing nuclear waste ever flips.

“All you need is some money, a couple lawyers and policies do change,” he said.

Gillette Mayor Shay Lundvall, on the other hand, tried to thread the needle: embrace nuclear growth without abandoning the coal, oil and gas backbone that built the region.

“Gillette has always powered this nation, and now we are expanding that legacy,” she said, calling Gordon’s grant a vote of confidence in the community’s role in America’s energy future.

Bottom line: Wyoming is betting big that nuclear fuel manufacturing can be a next chapter — not a replacement story. But in the place that’s long been the engine room of US coal, that’s a hard sell, even with $100 million on the table.