Bill Gates has helped break ground to mark the construction of the first next-generation nuclear reactor in the United States. The joint project by TerraPower and the Department of Energy plans to build a sodium test reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming by 2030.

Despite being one of the pioneering nations in the development of commercial nuclear energy, the United States nuclear industry has been moribund for decades. Since 1978, only two plants have begun construction – and that was in 2013 with none since then. Worse, these have all been conventional pressurized water and boiling water reactors without a single advanced type built since the 1970s.

There are any number of reasons for this. Economics has played its part because most American reactors are essentially one-offs with exorbitant costs resulting from the civil construction needed to house the reactors. Politics has been another factor, with a powerful environmentalist lobby routinely opposing all projects and pushing through rafts of hostile regulations. Then there is the problem of nuclear waste, with the US refusing to either implement proper storage facilities or to reprocess high-level waste as is routinely done in other countries.

（作者：产品中心）