NuScale
Power:
Blazing the
Trail
Helping to Reestablish the US’s Leadership in
Nuclear Energy
By Mike McGough, NuScale Power.
Mike McGough
In his role at NuScale, Mike McGough
oversees all sales, marketing, business
development,
proposal
management,
media engagement,
tradeshows, website,
and branding.
McGough joined
NuScale from
UniStar Nuclear
where he was Senior
Vice President,
Commercial
Operations.
McGough is a 37-
year veteran of the
commercial nuclear
industry supporting
construction,
operations,
maintenance and decommissioning of
nuclear plants worldwide. He has been
involved in new plants at Westinghouse
and UniStar, dry fuel storage as senior
vice president for NAC International,
low level waste management and
decommissioning at Duratek and Energy
Solutions.
McGough holds a Bachelor of Science
in Physical Metallurgy from Washington
State University, and MBA from the Katz
School of Business at the University
of Pittsburgh. He is also a graduate of
the Kellogg Management Institute at
Northwestern University.
An interview by Newal Agnihotri, Editor
of Nuclear Plant Journal, at the Utility
Working Conference in Amelia Island,
Florida on August 15, 2016.
1.
What is the status of the UAMPS
Carbon Free Power Project?
NuScale’s first Customer, Utah
Associated Municipal Power Systems is
developing a 12 module NuScale nuclear
power plant. UAMPS began evaluating
what they were going to do to replace
their aging coal plants, and we began
working with them on that in earnest in
early 2012. At the time, it was not clear
what the EPA rules
were going to say
about carbon, but
they knew that they
had to do something
to replace their coal
plants. UAMPS
begin to evaluate
how they were going
to do that, and they
determined,
they
wanted to do it with
nuclear, and they
selected NuScale’s
SMR
technology
as
the
answer.
UAMPS formally
launched the Carbon
Free Power Project
(CFPP) in 2015 as a
part of the Western Initiative for Nuclear,
which commenced two years earlier.
Once UAMPS did that, they began
evaluating siting. The site selection
process to locate a nuclear power plant
is fairly well known. You start with a
very wide region of interest. In UAMPS’
case, it included four or five states. They
narrowed it down to a region of interest
that included parts of the state of Idaho
and, most importantly, the 890-square-
mile Idaho National Laboratory (INL).
UAMPS selected that area as a highly
interesting location for obvious reasons.
The INL has been the home of 50
operating nuclear power plants. It has
an installed base of industrial resources,
of personnel, who are well familiar
with nuclear, an open community, and
a governor who’s very supportive of
nuclear. Once UAMPS narrowed it down
to INL, they determined five possible
sites that they liked at INL, and then
they narrowed it down to one location.
UAMPS knows precisely where they
want to locate their plant on INL property,
and they have informed the Idaho
National Laboratory of their desire to
put it there. UAMPS shared this location
at the recent Intermountain Energy
Summit in Idaho Falls in August 2016.
In February 2016, UAMPS and the
Department of Energy (DOE) signed a
99-year site use agreement that allows
UAMPS to develop and site their plant on
DOE property at INL. We’re at the step
in the process where INL has to agree
and approve that site selection; determine
that it will not impact any other missions
of the lab, and ensure that it wasn’t real
estate that INL had reserved for some
other purpose. In some number of
months, we expect that INL will give
UAMPS, the okay, and then UAMPS will
begin the Combined Operating License
Application (COLA) process.
When UAMPS begins that process,
they will write their COLA and send it
to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
(NRC) sometime in 2018 (it takes a year
and a half or so to write that document).
The COLA will be based on the NuScale
design. NuScale’s DCA (Design
Certification Application) is what we’re
writing and finishing now. NuScale will
submit that designcertificationapplication
by the end of 2016. Once submitted and
docketed with the NRC, a 40-month
review process commences. When we
submit the DCA, it gets reviewed and
granted, and then UAMPS submits their
COLA, and it gets granted shortly after
NuScale gets our design certification. At
that time, the UAMPS project will start
safety-related construction (in probably
late 2021) for a commercial operation of
their plant in mid-2024. Those are the
key timelines we’re focused on right now.
We’ve been working on this schedule
for a long time, and it requires UAMPS
and NuScale, to be thorough with our
applications and be sure that when we
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NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, September-October 2016
