Virginia-based investor-owned utility Dominion Energy wants to become the first in the nation to switch on a trendy small modular nuclear reactor, despite the absence of significant details about what this nuclear unicorn might look like. The company’s electric customers are going to pay in advance for the blank-slate SMR.
Last week (July 10), Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed legislation that will add $1.40 each month to the rates of Dominion’s typical Virginia customer to fund the as-yet-selected SMR technology. While most utility ratemaking centers on charges to customers for assets that are “used and useful,” collecting costs (and a return on investment) of projects under construction, while controversial, has long been used for some conventional nuclear projects, particularly in the South. Dominion will be implementing what some might call “allowance for funds used during contemplation,” or AFUDC.
Youngkin has long been salivating about an SMR for the Old Dominion. In 2022, he was promoting construction of an also unidentified SMR for southwestern Virginia. That pipedream crashed when the legislature balked, failing to pass necessary legislation.
Dominion wants to build its SMR on a site near Lake Anna, where the company has two operating nuclear units located near the power-hungry northern Virginia data center corridor. It also has two operating nukes at its Surry plant on the James River. The company has issued a request for proposals for its SMR project. Dominion Energy CEO Robert Blue said, “I want to reiterate this is not a commitment to build an SMR at North Anna, but an important first step in evaluating the technology and the North Anna site to support our customer’s future energy needs as outlined in our most recent long-range plan.”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
French electricity giant and nuclear power behemoth EDF has scrapped its design for a series of small modular reactors, abandoning a competition in Britain for a series of SMRs.
Prior to bailing out of the British competition, state-owned EDF announced July 1 that its initial design for small modular reactors was going into the waste basket. Reuters reported, “French state-owned utility EDF will switch to using existing technologies for the design of its small modular nuclear reactors (SMR) rather than continuing to develop its own innovations….EDF did not say what the budget impact would be of redrafting its design after four years of work, nor whether it would delay the rollout of its SMRs, which had been advertised as being ready for market in the 2030s.”
Reuters cited French investigative outlet L’Informé, which said company sources revealed that the “internal SMR design was being scrapped after encountering engineering difficulties, and that EDF would have to partner with other companies or use off-the-shelf technologies to avoid delays or budget overruns.”
EDF’s retreat leaves the British SMR contest with a short list of five companies in the competition run by government agency Great British Nuclear: Rolls-Royce, GE Hitachi, Westinghouse, Holtec Britain, and Nuscale Power. The agency will whittle the list down to two winners, perhaps to be announced in 2025.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
As EDF bailed out of the SMR competition, Britain’s new Labor government has faced another major disruption to the prior Conservative government’s push for SMRs. The Telegraph reported that Sheffield University’s Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Centre, which is developing the special steels SMRs will need, is looking at layoff in what amounts to dissolution of the center. The specialty steels are “a key element of Britain’s strategy to quadruple nuclear power by 2050.”
The nuclear center employes about 150, and those staff have been told that only about 30 will be retained. They will be absorbed in the university’s larger Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, with about 700 workers.
The problems at the Sheffield center apparently caught incoming energy secretary in the Starmer administration Ed Miliband unawares. Miliband’s official title is “Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.” Miliband is a veteran Labour Party leader, along with his brother David.
The Telegraph commented, “The plan represents a blow to Britain’s nuclear ambitions and a challenge for Mr. Miliband as he seeks to chart a path towards a low-carbon future,” adding that dozens of engineering and nuclear specialists could be lost – with many likely to be recruited by largely overseas companies now leading in nuclear manufacturing.
While the university owns the center, according to The Telegram it “is overseen by industrial partners such as Rolls-Royce and French energy giant EDF….”
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
President Biden last Tuesday (July 9) signed into law the “Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy Act” aka “ADVANCE Act,” designed to “reform” nuclear licensing to make bringing on advanced nukes – most specifically SMRs – easier. The legislation won wide bipartisan support in the House and Senate and had strong industry backing.
It is designed to streamline the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s detailed safety analyses, which many nuclear supporters have too easily blamed for derailing the first nuclear boom of the 1960s and early 1970s. An analysis by the Washington law firm of Hogan Lovells points to a new mission statement for the NRC as part of the attempt to hasten licensing of new nuclear plants. The analysis points out that “within one year after the date of enactment of the Act, and while remaining consistent with the policies in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (as amended), the Commission must update its mission statement to include that licensing and regulation of nuclear energy activities be conducted in a manner that does not unnecessarily limit ‘the benefits of nuclear energy technology to society.’”
Many analysts outside the industry have pointed to the industry’s own implementation decisions for consistently driving up costs of nuclear construction far faster and more steeply than NRC rules. During the early days of the nuclear blossoming, when the now-defunct Atomic Energy Commission was licensing anything that would cause atoms to split, some in the electricity industry were warning that nuclear economics were fundamentally flawed. The industry marched ahead regardless.
The ADVANCE Act drew little opposition. Chief among the opponents was nuclear physicist Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists. As the act was gathering steam in Congress, Lyman wrote, “Make no mistake: This is not about making the reactor licensing process more efficient, but about weakening safety and security oversight across the board, a longstanding industry goal. The change to the NRC’s mission effectively directs the agency to enforce only the bare minimum level of regulation at every facility it oversees across the United States.”
–Kennedy Maize