Gardner and Mishra reported in early November 2023 that NuScale Power said on Wednesday it has agreed with a power group in Utah to terminate the company's small modular reactor project, dealing a blow to U.S. ambitions for a wave of nuclear energy to fight climate change and sending NuScale's shares down 20%.
Preliminary Design From Patel (2020)
NuScale's Utah plant was expected to be the first SMR to win a license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for construction. But NuScale said it appeared unlikely the project will have enough customer subscriptions to continue toward deployment. NuScale said in January the target price for power from the plant was $89 per megawatt hour, up 53% from the previous estimate of $58 per MWh, raising concerns about customers' willingness to pay.
In 2020, the Department of Energy approved $1.35 billion over 10 years for the plant, known as the Carbon Free Power Project, subject to congressional appropriations. The department has provided NuScale and others about $600 million since 2014 to support commercialization of small reactor technologies.
NuScale had planned to develop the six-reactor 462 megawatt project with the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) and launch it in 2030, but several towns pulled out of the project as costs rose. UAMPS serves 50 members, mostly municipalities, in seven states, including Utah, Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming. UAMPS provides comprehensive energy services to its members, including planning, financing, developing, acquiring, constructing, operating and maintaining varied projects and transmission for the benefit of members.
UAMPS currently operates 16 separate projects that provide power supply, transmission, and other services to the members who participate in them. Members choose which projects they participate in, based on their unique needs.
SMALL MODULAR REACTORS FOR BASELOAD SUPPLY
In earlier statements, UAMPS indicated that even with increased efficiency and more distributed generation, UAMPS forecasts that additional baseload supply will be required to complement intermittent renewable energy and to ensure the stability of the grid. Large coal plants that have provided stable baseload supply for many decades are nearing the end of their life cycles, and the regulatory climate has turned strongly against fossil fuels.
Flexible, clean, carbon-free baseload supply thus becomes a critical part of the resource mix of the future, replacing coal-fired generating assets as they retire. After carefully forecasting energy needs, and analyzing all forms of clean baseload supply, UAMPS is investigating the possibility of building a Small Modular Nuclear Reactor plant using technology provided by NuScale Power.
Leaders of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) have said many times that it will be impossible for the United States and the world to decarbonize without additional supply from nuclear reactors. Nuclear is also important for national security, to maintain U.S. scientific superiority, to increase jobs and economic opportunities in the nuclear supply chain, and to maintain a stable electrical supply to power industry, commerce and the coming electrification of transportation. Many thousands of megawatts in coal plants will be lost in the next 15 years, and must be replaced.
UAMPS is in the forefront of the nuclear frontier with its investigation of constructing a small modular reactor (SMR) plant. A preferred site has been located in the DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory reservation near Idaho Falls. DOE has become an important partner in the project, providing support and cost-sharing. UAMPS, NuScale and Energy Northwest have entered into a Teaming Agreement that outlines the parties’ intent to investigate the viability of the plant.
NuScale’s SMR design is a 50 megawatt, pressurized water reactor and high pressure steel containment, referred to as the NuScale Power Module (NPM), to distinguish it from designs that do not have an integral containment. Twelve NPMs, each with its own dedicated steam turbine generator, could be combined in a single 600 MW power plant that is safer than existing designs, cost competitive, reliable and affordable. Importantly, the innovation in the NPM design is in using and re-packaging proven pressurized light water reactor materials, fuels and safety features in a simpler, safer, more elegant way.
A decision to go forward, or not, with the SMR project will be made in 2017 (postponed to 2023), as technological issues, costs and financing are better defined, and as demand is quantified through power sales contracts. The SMR project could be the first of its kind in the world in this project or others.
John Hopkins, NuScale's president and CEO, said in a release that the company will continue with its other domestic and international customers to bring American small modular reactor (SMR) technology to market and increase the U.S. nuclear manufacturing bases.
NuScale hopes to build SMRs in Romania, Kazakhstan, Poland and Ukraine. Critics have warned that Russia's takeover of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine -- along with repeated shelling near it, power cuts, and perils to the plant's water cooling resources -- means that reactors, which can release toxic, radioactive materials when disasters strike, should not be built in the region. [SMRs are not subject to release of radioactive materials]
An Energy Department spokesperson said it was unfortunate news, but added, "We believe the work accomplished to date on CFPP will be valuable for future nuclear energy projects.
"While not every project is guaranteed to succeed, DOE remains committed to doing everything we can to deploy these technologies to combat the climate crisis and increase access to clean energy," the spokesperson said.
Existing U.S. nuclear plants, which are larger, provide nearly half of the virtually carbon-free power generated in the U.S. SMRs are meant to fit new applications such as replacing shut coal plants and being located in remote communities. Backers have said the design was safer than today's reactors, but critics have said SMRs still produce hazardous nuclear waste. So far, only NuScale's SMR design has been approved by the NRC.
The public U.S. money for NuScale was awarded through a non-competitive funding vehicle that came before the energy and climate bills passed during the Biden administration.
NuScale Power Corporation is an advanced small modular reactor nuclear (SMR) technology company. The Company’s VOYGR SMR plants are powered by the NuScale Power Module, a small, safe, pressurized water reactor that can each generate 77 megawatts of electricity (MWe) or 250 megawatts thermal (gross) and can be scaled to meet customer needs through a range of flexible configurations up to 924 MWe (12 modules) of output.
The Company serves diverse customers across the world by supplying nuclear energy for electrical generation, district heating, desalination, commercial-scale hydrogen production, and other process heat applications. In addition to its 12-module (924 MWe) VOYGR-12 power plant, it offers smaller power plant solutions, including the six-module (462 MWe) VOYGR-6 and the four-module (308 MWe) VOYGR-4. It offers VOYGR power plant designs for three facility sizes that are scalable in that they are capable of housing from one to four, six or twelve NPMs.
[For additional information on SMRs, see the search-results for "SMRs" (here)].
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