nuclear-news

Following the withdrawal of seven Utah cities from the Carbon Free Power Project before the October deadline, the Southern Utah cities have passed resolutions to cap financial obligation for the first phase of licensing……..

Not all are completely sold on the safety of this power plant.

Scott Williams, the executive director of Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, told St. George News that one of the major issues with this project has to do with the lack of transparency, as UAMPS is exempt from the Open and Public Meetings Act.

“We don’t get minutes. We don’t get agendas.” he said…….

The next off-ramp for cities to withdraw will be near the end of the 2021 or early 2022 after the next licensing phase.

UAMPS has also talked about possibly downsizing the project from 12 modules to four or six modules…….

Environmentally devastating’

When it comes to potential environmental impacts, Williams said the number one problem is highly radioactive waste.

“We’ve been building nuclear reactors around the country since the 60s, and all of that highly radioactive fuel is just sitting at those power plants with nowhere to go.”…..

“We just think we shouldn’t generate anymore high-level nuclear waste until we have a safe, environmentally responsible way to deal with it.”

Second to this, he said, is the whole process of creating nuclear fuel. All of the stages – mining, milling and enrichment – present health hazards to people.

“Southeastern Utah is full of abandoned uranium mines that create radioactive exposure to the populations down there, and they’re not being cleaned up,” he said, adding that these mines are almost all in San Juan County.

“The entire Navajo Nation is full of them. In fact, we’re just putting a map together; There’s hundreds of them on the Navajo Reservation.”

Much of the mine tailings were put near Moab, he added, and for some 40 years they have been in the process of moving these tailings away from the Colorado River up to a place near Interstate 70, which has cost billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money.

This project, the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project, is being administered by the U.S. Department of Energy and is about 68% complete with efforts to move 16 million tons of uranium tailings from the banks of the Colorado River to a permanent disposal site 32 miles north, near Crescent Junction.

The final possible implication of the project, Williams said, would be in the case of an accident at the facility, which would be “environmentally devastating.”

“UAMPS and NuScale say this plant is meltdown-proof, but they’ve never actually built one of these modules before, so it’s all theoretical at this point.”

So if not nuclear, what’s the best option?

Aside from wind, solar and hydro (that’s already established), he said there is new technology coming to the scene that will be here before this power plant is finished. This technology includes utility-scale or home-based battery storage for intermittent power sources. Investing in energy efficiency is also integral, as well as making use of wasted power through grid integration.

But what it really comes down to, he said, is a shift in public perception.

“A lot of the people who are proponents of this nuclear plant are still thinking about energy the way we’ve been producing it in the past, and they say, ‘Battery storage will never be economically competitive.’ But they said that about solar 10 years ago, and it’s become cheaper faster than any of them could have predicted.”https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2020/11/21/asd-environmentally-devastating-or-really-really-safe-southern-utah-cities-set-financial-caps-for-nuclear-power-project/#.X7rBxGgzbIU

The latest power uprate will be reviewed by the NRC as part of a Standard Design Approval (SDA) application, which NuScale on Tuesday said it is schedule to submit in 2022. However, Hughes said that while NuScale has not yet made a final decision on the size or configuration that will be reflected in the SDA application, it will seek approval of 250 MWth modules. “Our final decision will be announced soon,” she said.

So far, the company has marked key regulatory milestones. On Aug. 28, notably, NuScale’s 50-MW (160 MWth) module became the first SMR to receive a final safety evaluation report (FSER) from the NRC as part of a Phase 6 review—the last and final phase—of NuScale’s Design Certification Application (DCA).

The latest power uprate will be reviewed by the NRC as part of a Standard Design Approval (SDA) application, which NuScale on Tuesday said it is schedule to submit in 2022. However, Hughes said that while NuScale has not yet made a final decision on the size or configuration that will be reflected in the SDA application, it will seek approval of 250 MWth modules. “Our final decision will be announced soon,” she said.

NuScale’s Announcement Gives UAMPS’ Options to Downsize Carbon-Free Power Project

When UAMPS will submit a COLA for its Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP), a 12-module NuScale power plant that is developing for a site at an Idaho National Laboratory (INL) site in Idaho Falls, Idaho, is not clear. UAMPS has so far developed the much-watched project as a 720-MWe plant, and it has said it expects the first of the 12 proposed NuScale modules could be operational in 2029 with the other 11 modules operational in 2030. But NuScale’s new power increase and its launch of smaller plant sizes now gives the project much-needed flexibility that could affect it current timetable.

The newly announced uprate is significant because it “facilitates plant downsizing,” UAMPS told POWER in a statement on Tuesday. “An important early task in the UAMPS [CFPP’s] next phase will be evaluating these new options in plant size and configuration. UAMPS will evaluate the possibilities of building a [308-MWe] 4-module or [462-MWe] 6-module plant instead of a 12-module plant,” it said.

UAMPS, notably, just wrapped up the first phase of the CFPP on Oct. 31, securing financial commitments for a potential 720-MW plant from 27 of its 48 members, which are mostly cities in Utah but also scattered across California, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming.

During the tumultuous first phase, at least eight cities—Lehi, Logan, Murray, Kaysville, Bountiful, Beaver, Heber, and Salmon River Electric—dropped out of the the project, and at least one, Idaho Falls halved its share. The withdrawing cities cited a long list of reasons for their reluctance to commit to the project, but costs—which could increase for remaining subscribers—and uncertainty led their concerns.

….. The next off-ramp will likely be in April 2023, when UAMPS is expected to submit the application to the NRC. The final off-ramp would be in December 2025, before the start of the construction period.

As POWER has reported, the 720-MWe CFPP is currently estimated to cost $6.1 billion, and UAMPS is expected to shoulder $4.76 billion of that figure, which is based on a Class 4 estimate (and could decrease by about 10% or increase by 30%). The Department of Energy (DOE) will fund the remaining $1.355 billion through an award announced on Oct. 16. The award, which will be subject to yearly Congressional appropriations, replaces the DOE’s Joint Use Module Plant (JUMP) program.

……. On Tuesday, UAMPS again stressed that the project’s LCOE (Levelised Cost Of Energy )will play a crucial factor in any decisions it makes. Before it can agree to a change in plant size or configuration—including to move forward with NuScale’s newly launched smaller power plant solutions—“UAMPS would have to be assured that the [LCOE] of $55/MWh (or lower) would be preserved. UAMPS would also want assurance that the current schedule/timeline would be followed,” the agency said. …….