Bechtel walks away from Natrium's next construction phase

Bechtel Power Corporation has told Virginia workforce officials it will cut about 200 positions at its Reston headquarters after it and TerraPower failed to agree terms for the next phase of the Natrium Demonstration Project and, in the words of the filing, decided to move forward separately. The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice was signed on September 13 by Bechtel's Natrium project director, Suchit Chopra, and says the layoffs would begin on or about November 16, though Bechtel is trying to place affected staff on other assignments. Bechtel has been TerraPower's engineering, procurement and construction contractor since 2020 and started field construction at Kemmerer Unit 1 in Wyoming in April 2026, the first utility-scale advanced reactor build in the United States.