Energy Department Selects TVA and Holtec to Advance Deployment of U.S. Small Modular Reactors | Department of Energy

Energy Department Selects TVA and Holtec to Advance Deployment of U.S. Small Modular Reactors | Department of Energy Energy Department Promises $800 Million for SMRs The Energy Department has picked the Tennessee Valley Authority and Holtec Government Services to split $800 million for small modular reactors, at the TVA’s Clinch River site, in Oak Ridge, and at Holtec’s Palisades nuclear plant, near Kalamazoo, Michigan. The TVA wants to build a BWRX-300 reactor, a scaled-down version of GE’s boiling water reactor, which is meant to be easier to build, with simplified safety systems. The first of those is planned by Ontario Power Generation, which eventually wants to build four. The second would be a TVA project. Those two utilities are coordinating closely with the NRC and Canadian regulators. In May, the TVA applied to the NRC for a construction permit. Ontario Power Generation already has permission to build. Duke Energy is investing to advance the licensing of the reactor. Holtec, an international nuclear company that manufactures dry casks for spent fuel storage and other nuclear components in a factory in Camden, N.J., has a design for a 300-megawatt pressurized water reactor. The company does extensive work in reactor decommissioning, and bought the Palisades nuclear plant with the intention of dismantling it, but is now on the verge of restarting it, with help from the Department of Energy and the state of Michigan. It wants to build two SMRs on the site, which it would own and operate. Both the Michigan and Tennessee projects have strong local support.