US energy consortium Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) has identified a preferred site at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Idaho National Laboratory (INL) for NuScale Power's first small modular reactor (SMR) project, NuScale said on its website. UAMPS CEO Doug Hunter said a location in the southern part of the 1,000km2 laboratory site was selected for development of a 600MWe NPP comprisiing 12 50MWe modules. The location will not interfere with any INL facilities or research, and the geology is stable, he noted.
UAMPS will be the owner-operator of the plant, which is scheduled to begin operation in 2024-2025 to coincide with expected closures of fossil-fuelled generating assets. NuScale Power was incorporated in 2007 to design and commercialise an SMR. In October 2011, Texas-based multinational Fluor Engineering became the majority investor and to date has invested over $170m in NuScale. In December 2013, DOE announced its selection of NuScale Power to receive up to $226m of matching funds to support the further development of the design and to secure design certification from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The UAMPS Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP) was formally launched in 2015, bringing together UAMPS, NuScale, Energy NorthWest and Enercon Services in a project to build the first-of-a-kind of NuScale's reactor design.
The SMR design, with passive safety features, is being provided by NuScale Power of Portland, Oregon. The plant will include a reactor building, turbine building, used fuel storage area, administration and other facilities.
Regional agency UAMPS is a political subdivision of the State of Utah that provides wholesale electricity to community-owned power systems in Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming. It established the CFPP to provide for additional mid-sized baseload electrical generating capacity to meet the expected future needs of its members. This followed the formation of the Western Initiative for Nuclear (WIN) collaboration, set up by NuScale in 2013 to study the demonstration and deployment of a multi-module NuScale SMR plant by 2024.
