The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) and the Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) are preparing to release a $900 million funding request for their “Generation III+ Small Modular Reactor (SMR) Pathway to Deployment Program.”
The program aims to provide $800 million to two projects involving teams of utilities, reactor vendors, builders and end-users or power off-takers. The goal will be to help the teams deploy their first plants and create a model for others to follow quickly.
Every major utility and scores of small modular reactor companies are racing to deploy small nuclear reactors to meet demand, but progress has stalled as novel reactor designs are held up in the approval process by the Nuclear Regulatory Committee and face an uncertain future should their designs be approved.
These are companies like Kairos Power, Oklo Energy, GE-Hitachi, Nuscale Power, TerraPower, and X-Energy. In 2022, Kairos Power set up a consortium with Constellation Energy, Southern Company, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Canadian company Bruce Power to enable just the kind of partnership the Department of Energy seems to be looking for.
However, the same issues with community approvals, permitting and site selection which have bedeviled the deployment of solar and wind energy projects could compound for nuclear energy development — despite the technology operating for decades in submarines sailing around the world.
In addition to the initial $800 million the DOE is distributing, another $100 million will be made available to support the continued development of new nuclear in the U.S. by addressing issues with designing, licensing, supplying and preparing sites for new nuclear power generation.
The push for new nuclear capacity in the U.S. is happening as the nation risks losing its supremacy in one of the last industries generating carbon-free sources of power where it has historically been a leader. China, which already dominates wind, solar, and energy storage markets globally is on pace to be the leader in nuclear generation as well over the next decade.
In a sense, the U.S. needs its nuclear renaissance to remain a player on the global energy stage as the shift to zero-emission sources of power accelerates.
This urgency has a domestic component as well. A recent report from the Department of Energy indicated that the U.S. would need an additional 700 to 900 gigawatts of clean capacity to meet the goals for a 100% clean power sector by 2035 and net-zero emissions by 2050.
Of the energy sources that can help the U.S. reach those targets, only geothermal energy and nuclear power enjoy broad, bipartisan support.
If the nuclear industry is to succeed in the U.S. (and that is a very big “if”), it will require massive regulatory support at the federal level to overcome what have been historically and incredibly costly overruns and project delays.
Coupled with the dramatic surge in power demand from reindustrialization, electrification, and new industries like artificial intelligence hoovering up power at a clip the U.S. had not seen for decades, the challenges for nuclear — and the energy industry as whole — are legion.
The solicitation for bids under this new project is a good step forward in the race for the nuclear renaissance in the U.S.
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