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NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, September-October 2016
send them to the NRC, they are complete
submittals. If, for some reason, they
find our application to be incomplete,
then the 40-month review clock doesn’t
start until it is deemed to be complete.
The UAMPS project is part of what we
created as the Western Initiative for
Nuclear, back in 2013. The Western
Initiative for Nuclear is of interest to
the 19 Western states that are members
of the Western Governors’ Association.
It was in their 10-year energy plan as a
specific stated goal in 2012 to facilitate
the development of small modular reactor
projects in the West. Within those 19
Western states, there were six specific
states that had not just the government
interest from the governor’s office
and the governor’s energy office, but
had major utility interest for the same
reasons that UAMPS had. They have
to replace baseload coal. Those states
include Washington State, New Mexico,
Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, and of course
Idaho,. There are NuScale projects being
contemplated in various degrees or stages
of development in all six of those states.
And when I say various stages, I mean
some of them have already gone through
siting. Some states are just trying to
see if they have enough critical mass of
potential ownership to own a 570 MW
nuclear power plant that’s going to cost
them $2.5 or $3 billion. And that takes
some work—to make sure that you have
right-minded people with the right kind
of resources, the right needs and the
commitment to do it. Because as you
can see, the UAMPS project has been
going for over four years and we have
eight more years to go before we’re
commercial.
2.
Are there other utilities who you
consider to be good prospects?
Yes, in those six western states that
I mentioned, and UAMPS has 44 or 45
members. Their membership changes
every once in a while. UAMPS had one
member that joined recently, just because
they want to be a part of the CFPP, and
they have several other new municipal
utilities that are considering joining
because they want to be part of it too.
They all want some of the offtake from
the plant.
Energy Northwest will operate
UAMPS’s plant because Energy
Northwest wants to build one of their own
before 2030. Energy Northwest was the
first utility to select NuScale technology
back in 2011. Again, in those six states
that I previously mentioned, there are
utility consortiums and utility owners in
each one of those states that intend to
someday own a NuScale plant.
3.
Internationally,
which
other
countries have expressed interest in
NuScale technology?
NuScale will provide its technology
to any country, anywhere, anytime,
provided they meet certain criteria. One,
they have to have a 123 agreement, and
they have to have an 810 agreement.
Those are the agreements that allow US
companies to export nuclear technology
to other countries for peaceful uses of the
atom.
If they don’t have those agreements
in place, then the conversation goes no
further. And the list of people who have
those is fairly short. That’s the first
screen.
The second screen is do you have an
owner? Is there a utility that owns poles
and wires, and has a couple of million
customers that they provide electricity to,
and does that utility want a nuclear power
plant to help meet their customer needs?
They’ve got to have approximately
$3 billion to do what it takes. They’re
going to pay NuScale $2.5-$2.6 billion,
and they’re going to need a couple
hundred million dollars to do all the other
stuff. And patience is definitely a virtue.
If you started today at a brand-new place
that met all those criteria, you might get
this done in 15 years, maybe 10 if you
really hurry--assuming that the country
had an existing nuclear regulatory
infrastructure. If they don’t have an NRC
or NRC equivalent, they have to stand
one up. Look at what ENEC (
Emirates
Nuclear Energy Corporation
) did.
When the UnitedArab Emirates said,
we want to build nuclear power plants,
they had to build the nuclear regulatory
infrastructure.
4.
Why is the NuScale plant called a
“digital plant”?
In the NuScale 12-module control
room you can control and operate all
12 NuScale power modules. Each one
of the stacks of five monitor screens is
everything necessary to monitor and
NuScale Power commissioned the world’s first control room simulator for a multi-module small reactor power plant in
July 2012 at its Corvallis, OR, office.
NuScale Power...
