Nuclear Newswire reported in later 2022 that since at least June of 2021—when TerraPower and PacifiCorp announced plans to site the Natrium reactor demonstration project at one of Wyoming’s retiring coal plants—the concept of repurposing those plants to host nuclear reactors has been a popular topic of conversation among the energy cognoscenti. This September, for instance, the Department of Energy released a major, 127-page report on the subject, Investigating Benefits and Challenges of Converting Retiring Coal Plants into Nuclear Plants, concluding that hundreds of U.S. coal power sites could be successfully converted. According to the DOE, this would dramatically increase the supply of firm and dispatchable clean electricity to the grid and deliver quite sizable gains to the nation’s goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.
More recently, on October 24 (2022) the American Nuclear Society’s Operations and Power Division contributed to the conversation with a webinar on the potential of a large-scale coal-to-nuclear transition in the United States. Entitled “Powering Our Future: The Coal to Nuclear Opportunity,” the one-hour panel discussion featured Xcel Energy’s Patrick Burke, the DOE’s Andrew Griffith, X-energy’s Carol Lane, Good Energy Collective’s Jessica Lovering, the Kentucky state government’s Kenya Stump, and, as moderator, Christine King, director of the DOE’s Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) initiative (more).
In opening comments, King noted:
“Over the past year, GAIN has put together a pilot project to work with three coal stations specifically to investigate the feasibility of repowering the plants with nuclear energy. These plants are all owned by utilities without nuclear in their portfolio. Our work is focused on near-term reactor retirement options, as well as longer-term strategies.”
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