Three
small modular reactor (SMR) designs will be competing for US government
funding to support their licensing and construction in the US by 2022.
SMR
developers from Westinghouse, NuScale Power and Babcock & Wilcox
were all expected to file applications by the May 21 deadline for
funding from the Department of Energy.
Department of Energy (DOE) SMR investment funds
will be awarded to SMR projects that have the most potential and
promise to be licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and achieve
commercial operation by 2022. The cost-share agreements will span a
five-year period and, subject to Congressional appropriations, provide a
total investment of approximately $900 million, with at least 50
percent provided by private industry.
NuScale
Power LLC is working with South Carolina Gas & Electric, a division
of Scanna, who will lead the formation of a consortium to license and
operate the first NuScale plant at the federal Savannah River Site in
South Carolina.
NuScale
was the first US-based SMR vendor to begin discussions with the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission and has been engaged in pre-application
discussions since 2008, the company said in a statement May 21,
confirming its application for funding.
NuScale
Power said a Customer Advisory Board was formed in 2008, and is now
comprised of 17 utilities and organizations, to guide NuScale in the
commercialization of its technology.
Its
membership includes the operators of more than one-half of the 104
operating U.S. nuclear power plants and organizations representing all
of the U.S. cooperatively-owned utilities.
NuScale is working with the Fluor Corporation on its design.
Westinghouse
confirmed May 21 that it had filed its application for funding and
announced that Burns & McDonnell and General Dynamics Electric Boat
would join its consortium with plans to build the Westinghouse SMR on an existing nuclear reactor site at Callaway in Missouri.
Generation
mPower LLC, a joint venture between Babcock & Wilcox Nuclear
Energy, Inc. and Bechtel Power Corporation, was also expected to submit
its application May 21 for the B&W mPower SMR design.
All three consortia’s SMR designs are based on light water reactor technology.
A
fourth SMR design, the G4M by Gen4 Energy, formerly Hyperion, uses lead
bismuth liquid metal coolant. Gen4 Energy continues to work with the
DOE under a Memorandum of Agreement to deploy its SMR at the federal
Savannah River site in South Carolina.
But
the company announced April 24 that it would withdraw from plans to
apply for the DOE SMR development funds, saying that the terms of the
funding competition meant that light water reactor technology had “a
much higher probability of success.” –David Stellfox
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