Bright, an anti-nuclear reporter, spent the first half of his article generally denagrating the progress of the nuclear rensaasaince. Then he moves into discussing the SMRs., also with tongue in check and perhaps dreaming of windmills and solar farms, or maybe even oil and gas wells in his back yard.
Plant Vogtle's Planned Nuclear Additions — Units 3 and 4 — are pictured
in July in eastern Georgia by Georgia Power. [Not Planned. Unit 3 is in
operations and Unit #4 will be soon]
"Small reactors
As Vogtle expands, Southern and many other power companies are trying to crack the equation of cheaper and easier to build carbon-free nuclear power. This month, a Washington state public power agency said it's planning to build the state's first small modular reactors, eyeing a dozen units in partnership with a nuclear developer. Back in January, NuScale Power Corp. became the first small modular reactor design to be certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
And Westinghouse, the AP1000's architect, is aiming to build an AP300 — its first small modular reactor by 2030, looking at shuttered coal plants in West Virginia and Ohio as possible sites. Engineering, procurement and construction contractors as well as financiers now have a preference for power projects at a fraction of Vogtle's cost, according to Shah from the Loan Programs Office.
“The beauty of the small modular reactor is it fits within that $2 [billion] to $4 billion price range," Shah said.
The country’s largest public power provider, the Tennessee Valley Authority, has the biggest plans of the bunch. With global partners, it’s aiming to build and standardize a commercially viable small modular reactor that would be 300 MW per unit, compared to an AP1000 unit that is more than 1,000 MW.
Using a GE BWRX-300 design, TVA hopes to build a successful pilot and a fleet of potentially 20 small reactors to meet growing energy demands in the southeastern United States.
"TVA wants to be one of the first, and everybody else wants to see others succeed before they jump into the water,” said Greg Boerschig, vice president of the Clinch River Project, the agency's first planned small modular reactor project.
Boerschig said some of TVA's major takeaways from observing the Georgia project include the importance of using a mature design from the start and finishing one phase before moving onto the next.
“Don't let your desire to succeed get in front of the will to plan. And plan effectively," Boerschig said, adding that TVA “can make the same mistakes [Southern] did on a small plant, and we don't want to do that.”
Echols said TVA could run into similar overruns by venturing to attempt another first of its kind.
"'Why are y'all building four 300-megawatt reactors that haven't been built anywhere instead of an AP1000?'" he said in speaking to E&E News. "You could just have our workforce just come up there, just one state up. That would be very attractive."
TVA CEO Jeff Lyash has previously said that the agency favors small modular reactors over larger counterparts, citing factors including smaller anticipated capital commitments and shorter construction timelines.
Boerschig said TVA's plans of smaller, dispatchable power make the most sense for the agency.
He hopes TVA in 2024 will be able to demonstrate that a first-of-a-kind small modular reactor can scale up to help meet growing power demand and can secure funding and construction approval next. In 2026, the electric utility expects it can get approval from U.S. nuclear regulators for the model.
Critics like Smith say utilities across the Southeast, such as TVA, Duke Energy Corp. and Dominion Energy Inc., are incentivized by a lack of energy market competition to build projects because they can profit with a rate of return guaranteed by state regulators.
“The southeast United States is really the only place that has been serious about trying to keep the nuclear flame alive,” Smith said, “because nobody else in competitive markets will touch building a new nuclear power plant.”
A federal agency, TVA is regulated by its board of directors, whose nine members are appointed by the U.S. president.
The power provider once proposed building 17 nuclear reactors at seven sites, but only seven were built, at a total cost of $8 billion across the 1970s and '80s. The last nuclear plant to come online before Vogtle's expansion, was TVA's Watts Bar Unit 2, started in the 1970s and brought into operation in 2016.
Smith called small modular reactors “a distraction.”
“They take our eye off the prize of really working with the technologies that we know can be done, can be modularly built out like solar and wind,” he said.
[But SMRs are on the way. Wind and solar will take a nose-dive as SMRs replace coal and increasingly expensive wind and solar installations as bad weather becomes more fierce].
National security
Last month, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm visited Georgia — and POLITICO Pro reported that she expressed confidence that Vogtle’s latest woes wouldn’t depress future nuclear investment. Granholm insisted that the new reactor’s entry into commercial operations would bring international interest to American nuclear. That interest is crucial to U.S. national security if the nation wants to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and maintain its deterrence capabilities, Shah told E&E News. That’s because other countries will continue to pursue nuclear energy regardless of where the U.S. takes it, he said.
"If we don't show a proactive stance here, then countries who want access to nuclear technology will go to those other countries, oftentimes Russia and China," Shah said.
Biegalski echoed the sentiment, saying the United States has "to be very, very, very careful at how world maps are redrawn and alliances are redrawn through these energy policies."
As for improving upon Vogtle's delays and cost overruns, and those of nuclear plants that preceded it, Lyman said that it "doesn't seem like the industry writ large is really interested in learning those lessons." Domestic appetite for nuclear is still holding on strong among some power providers.
Dominion and Duke have included nuclear power in integrated resource plans. Duke in particular got $70 million approved from the North Carolina Utilities Commission, Shah said, to start working out early site permitting for a small modular reactor.
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