A company racing to be among the first to operate a small nuclear reactor in the United States received a vote of confidence from the federal government Friday after encountering recent roadblocks.
The Energy Department approved a $1.4 billion grant to help defray costs for a group of utilities that are the first in line to buy power from the reactors produced by NuScale Power.
The Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, a group of small, community-owned utilities in six Western states, had previously indicated the group might pull out of the NuScale project unless it received the extra funding from the government.
“It is entirely appropriate for DOE to help de-risk this first-of-a-kind, next generation nuclear project,” said Douglas Hunter, UAMPS CEO and general manager, announcing DOE’s approval of the grant. “This is a great example of a partnership with DOE to lower the cost of introduction of transformative advanced nuclear technology that will provide affordable, carbon-free electricity all over the country and the world.”
The award, to be spread out over 10 years, is still subject to appropriations by Congress. That could be manageable given that bipartisan majorities have supported NuScale over the years for its potential to prove the viability of small reactors, an emissions-free technology of a type that has never been deployed and expected to be safer and cheaper than traditional large nuclear projects that have struggled economically.
The Energy Department is already a collaborative partner on the UAMPS project. The department has invested more than $300 million into NuScale since 2014, spanning the Obama and Trump administrations.
It has signed on to buy power from two of the 12 reactors, which are being built at the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory.
But DOE’s approval of the award doesn’t mean UAMPS for certain will move forward with buying power from the reactors.
In August, UAMPS notified NuScale that it was pushing back the timeline for when it plans to operate the first reactor from 2026 to 2029, citing an unexpected rise in costs. The entire plant of 12 individual 60-megawatt reactors won’t be completed until 2030, a slip from an expected 2027 time frame.
Two of UAMPS’s members, the cities of Logan and Lehi in Utah, have withdrawn from the project, citing the increasing price tag.
UAMPS lacks sufficient members signed on to the project to utilize the entirety of the 720 megawatts of power capable of being produced at the plant.
LaVarr Webb, UAMPS’s spokesman, told the Washington Examiner that the DOE award would be sufficient to reach the $55-per-megawatt-hour target price the group has set in order for the reactors to be viable for members.
He said members have until the end of October to adjust the amount of power they buy or leave the project.
“We fully expect the project to proceed,” Webb said.
With uncertainty in mind, DOE has been trying to spread out its resources to guard against failure.
This week, the department announced it is providing $160 million to two other U.S. companies building smaller advanced nuclear reactors that can be operational this decade.
NuScale’s light-water reactor is the only small nuclear technology that has received design approval from the Nuclear Energy Regulatory Commission.
