“Communities don’t want to tie their fate to expensive new technologies where there is a risk that costs will go up dramatically,” Schlissel says. He believes that Utah “dodged a financial disaster.” UAMPS also serves towns in Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming. The development is a “railroad track warning signal for SMR design,” says David Schlissel, director of resource planning analysis for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, an Ohio-based think tank. Prices for power had doubled, and a number of towns pulled out of the agreement.ĭata centers demand massive amounts of energy, which likely spurred interest in co-location with SMRs. Scheduled to go online by 2030, the 462-megawatt “Carbon Free Power Project” had already suffered major setbacks. One week after the DELTA Energy Lab announcement, NuScale, the country’s leading SMR developer, which has interests in the Virginia plan, and the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), an interlocal state agency that supplies energy services, canceled their SMR project. Energy DELTA Lab’s website calls the location “the most significant economic development project the region has ever seen.” “That’s a major policy shift that feels like it should have some type of citizen input before it’s finalized,” says Wally Smith, vice president of the Clinch Coalition, a local environmental group.īeing first out of the gate on nuclear energy projects is risky. According to the federal Office of Nuclear Energy, the United States “does not currently recycle spent nuclear fuel.”Īlso included are an estimated 10 to 12 data centers, the computer server networks that are the neural hubs of the internet. The plan also includes spent nuclear fuel recycling, another national first if the Virginia project can pull it off. Individual modules can produce up to 300 megawatts of carbon-free electricity and be factory-manufactured, transported, and assembled at power plant sites, which cuts down on costs. An SMR is an advanced design that is basically a scaled-down version of the light water reactors found in conventional nuclear plants. But the Energy DELTA Lab website indicates that SMRs are in the mix for the multibillion-dollar project. The administration’s press release about the plan did not specifically mention SMRs. The proposal, which would take shape on 65,000 acres of former Wise County coal mine lands, would create 1,650 jobs. How else to explain that state and county officials have not held a single public forum about SMRs and associated projects expected to launch in ten years?Įnergy DELTA Lab plans to research and develop a next-generation nuclear energy source along with other new clean and renewable energy technologies through more than 12 projects, with the goal of providing about one gigawatt of power. At the same time, it appears that the less workaday people in Southwest Virginia know about those plans the better. SMRs have never been deployed commercially in the United States, and Youngkin wants Virginia to be first out of the gate. Private partners, including the energy companies Appalachian Power and Dominion Energy, which owns the state’s two conventional nuclear plants, are also on board. Energy DELTA Lab, a nonprofit initiative, spearheads the effort, along with the state’s Southwest Virginia Energy Research and Development Authority, InvestSWVA, and the Virginia Department of Energy. Glenn Youngkin announced his nuclear “moon shot” plan, a major public-private energy project to build small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). Is it good to be first? In early November, Virginia’s Republican Gov. This article appears in the December 2023 issue of The American Prospect magazine. An artist’s rendering of a NuScale small modular nuclear reactor
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