In 2020, Oregon company NuScale won $1.35 billion in federal funds. It lost $58.3 million in three months last year
Not happening: Depicted in a digital rendering, plans for this 6-module nuclear plant in Idaho Falls have been terminated. Photo: NuScale Power
By Andrew Engelson. January 11, 2024. Two and a half years after Columbia Insight reported on two companies’ ambitious plans to build new nuclear power plants in the Pacific Northwest using small modular reactors (SMRs), both projects have now been canceled, and two companies involved in the projects have laid off significant portions of their staff—despite receiving generous grants from the U.S. Department of Energy.
On Jan. 8, Portland-based NuScale, which hoped to launch the first prototype SMR-based power plant at the Idaho National Laboratory, announced it was laying off 154 people—28% of its full-time staff—to achieve savings of $50 million dollars.
“We continue to invest in our future,” NuScale CEO John Hopkins said in a press release, “including work needed for the near-term deployment of our SMR power plants powered by our 77 MWe NuScale Power Modules.”
NuScale CEO John L. Hopkins. Photo: NuScale Power
NuScale, which has offices in Portland and Corvallis, claims to be the only company in the United States with regulatory approval to build SMR nuclear power units, which the International Atomic Energy Agency defines as generating 300 megawatts of electric capacity (MWe) or less.
The layoff announcement comes two months after NuScale announced the termination of the Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP), a collaboration with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS)—a Utah state power supply system—to build and scale SMR-based nuclear power plants.
The CFPP, which got its start in 2015 and was formally incorporated in 2020, aimed to build at least six prototype plants at the Idaho National Laboratory, a U.S. government facility near Idaho Falls that has a decades-long history of polluting the Snake River Aquifer.
A joint press release from NuScale and UAMPS stated, “Despite significant efforts by both parties to advance the CFPP, it appears unlikely that the project will have enough subscription to continue toward deployment. Therefore, UAMPS and NuScale have mutually determined that ending the project is the most prudent decision for both parties.”
In an email to Columbia Insight, Jessica Stewart, a spokesperson for UAMPS, said few other utilities had agreed to subscribe to the CFPP plan.
“The parties decided to terminate the project rather than continue to incur costs on a project unlikely to move forward,” Steward wrote.
Stewart said the Utah utility won’t be moving forward on developing more nuclear in the near future.
“UAMPS believes that new nuclear will play a pivotal role in repowering the electric grid over the next 10-15 years, but, for the immediate term, we will focus our efforts on the non-nuclear resource investigations that UAMPS already has underway.”
NuScale has not responded to requests for comment from Columbia Insight.
Whopping financial loss
According to documents filed with the Securities Exchange Commission, in the third quarter of 2023, NuScale posted a net loss of $58.3 million for the three-month period ending on Sept. 30.
According to Reuters, after it announced news of the CFPP termination in November, the price of NuScale stock dropped 37% to around $2.45 a share, down from a high of $15.
In 2020, NuScale and UAMPS were awarded a $1.35 billion, 10-year cost-share grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to build a dozen SMR reactors as part of the CFPP project at the Idaho National Laboratory.
Neither NuScale, UAMPS nor the Department of Energy were willing to say how much of the $1.35 billion grant had been awarded or spent.
An article published by Energy Intelligence estimates that NuScale has received $583 million in DOE funds since 2015.
On its website, CFPP said, “CFPP LLC is actively engaged in ongoing dialogue with the U.S. Department of Energy on the future of the CFPP cost share award and the disposition of CFPP project assets.”
Grant County partnership in flux
In addition, Columbia Insight has learned from a spokesperson at Grant County PUD that the public utility district in central Washington has withdrawn from a planned collaboration with the Maryland-based company X-energy to build an SMR-based nuclear power plant.
“We believe in the X-energy technology, but we would like more cost certainty before we move forward with any plans to build a plant of our own,” said Christine Pratt, Grant PUD public information officer. “We’re pretty big on power generation, but we’re actually a small utility when it comes to the number of customers. The risk to our utility and customers is too great unless we have more cost certainty.”
In October, the Maryland-based company announced it had canceled plans for a merger and initial public stock offering. That same month, according to an article at HuffPost, X-energy also laid off a chunk of its staff.
The article at Energy Intelligence estimates X-energy has received a total of $242 million in DOE funds.
“Grant PUD selected X-energy’s Xe-100 as its advanced nuclear technology of choice, and we both continue to work together to evaluate paths forward for an Xe-100 project in Grant County,” said Robert McEntyre, a spokesperson for X-energy, of the collaboration with Grant PUD.
Generator: Central Washington’s Grant County PUD operates two dams on the Columbia River, the Wanapum Dam (pictured) and Priest Rapids Dam. Photo: Grant County PUD
In a press release posted on Jan. 10, Energy Northwest, a former partner in the collaboration between X-energy and Grant PUD, announced it was receiving a $10 million investment from Puget Sound Energy to continue to develop SMR nuclear power in the Pacific Northwest using X-energy’s technology.
In July, Energy Northwest and X-energy signed an agreement to build up to 12 SMR reactors in central Washington.
Commenting on Grant PUD’s withdrawal from the agreement, Kelly Rae, a spokesperson for Energy Northwest, said, “Launching any sort of a large-scale project, whether it’s building something or creating something in the technology sector that’s the first of its kind, there are going to be a lot of bumps in the road.
“But we’re really encouraged and we have the backing from utilities who are encouraging us to pursue this technology as an option for clean energy in Washington.”
Taxpayer dollars go “poof”
Local activists are skeptical, however, that nuclear power, which generates considerable toxic waste as a byproduct, is the answer to the Pacific Northwest’s need for zero-emission electricity.
Theodora Tsongas, an environmental health scientist with Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, is frustrated that so many taxpayer dollars have been spent trying to boost nuclear power as a part of the Pacific Northwest’s efforts to decarbonize its power supply.
“Nuclear power plants are costly to build and operate and require enormous taxpayer subsidies, government loan guarantees, and will only add to the burden of consumers struggling with increased energy costs,” said Tsongas. “Dollars spent on unproven ‘new generation’ nuclear plants should instead be used for enhancing the resilience of the electrical grid by investing in safe renewable sources, energy efficiency and conservation.”
Little power: NuScale’s power module is 76 feet tall, 15 feet wide. Photo: NuScale Power
According to Arjun Makhijani, an engineer and nuclear researcher who has studied NuScale’s attempts to create SMR-generated nuclear power, the company has only received approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a 50 MWe version of its power modules, and hasn’t yet been approved for the 77 MWe version the company promotes.
In addition, Makhijani says that NuScale’s design was approved in 2023 with notable concerns expressed by the NRC.
“While they say it’s certified, it was certified with a giant asterisk that nobody talks about, which is that steam generator that’s inside the reactor in order to eliminate the water pumps and simplify the design is vulnerable to vigorous oscillations,” he says.
Makhijani has written a number of papers for the nonprofit Environmental Working Group noting that these highly touted new reactors are still untested and are neither more efficient nor produce less spent fuel than traditional reactors.
“I think this is a lot of businesses whistling past the graveyard of nuclear energy,” Makhijani said. “We shouldn’t be relying on it for seriously protecting ourselves from CO2.”
There is widespread consensus that carbon dioxide pollution can be controlled without nuclear power. It is naive to believe that individuals world-wide will choose a lower standard of living (equivalent to lower energy consumption) for the greater good of stopping climate change.
Thank you to this reporter who really did his homework, and then some – rather than rely solely on industry press releases (duly noted in this comprehensive article). Andy Engelson provides us with a close look at not only the big tax dollars (we the people are losing big on this side of things) but also gives us links to the facts (rather than company hype) about the NuScale debacle. If only our elected representatives in Oregon and Washington (and federal reps as well) were willing to go deeper than industry lobbyists (and DOE/Biden administration officials) who so far have been sadly successful at generating a veneer of “bipartisan” support for this boondoggle pursuit of what is too expensive and too late to help us address the climate catastrophe. The opportunity cost is an additional burden: every tax dollar poured into chasing the nuclear genie is a dollar NOT spent on available, truly cost-effective and non safe alternatives, and serves to delay the emissions reductions that we need to be making now.
Please correct the typo: The opportunity cost is an additional burden: every tax dollar poured into chasing the nuclear genie is a dollar NOT spent on available, truly cost-effective and non safe alternatives, and serves to delay the emissions reductions that we need to be making now this should instead read:
The opportunity cost is an additional burden: every tax dollar poured into chasing the nuclear genie is a dollar NOT spent on available, truly cost-effective and SAFE alternatives, and serves to delay the emissions reductions that we need to be making now.
The BIG BIG BIG advantage that nuclear has over wind or solar is simple – 100% availability no matter what the sun or weather are.
No “Texas freezeout” issues.
The OTHER big advantage is that the production is MUCH higher per amount of land used.
Tradeoff is dealing with the radioactive waste, of course.