$650M funding round aims to bring TerraPower's Natrium power plant in Wyoming online by 2030

Datacenter operators’ desire for cheap and clean energy to power their facilities has led to renewed interest in nuclear energy and small modular reactors (SMRs) – a tech Nvidia has just decided is worthy of investment.

The GPU giant's venture capital arm, NVentures, this week joined Bill Gates and HD Hyundai in a $650 million funding round that pumped cash into a company called TerraPower that aims to make micro-reactors a reality.

Founded in 2006 by the former Microsoft CEO, TerraPower has spent the better part of two decades developing a reactor design that's easier and cheaper to build than the massive water pressure reactors common today.

Developed in collaboration with the Department of Energy's Advanced Reactor Demonstration Project, TerraPower's Natrium plant in Wyoming will feature a 345-megawatt reactor backed by a molten salt energy storage system with a gigawatt of capacity.

Work on the non-nuclear portions ...