EGN NEWS DESK
Palisades could be the primary nuclear plant within the U.S. to reopen after being shut down for decommissioning. Actually, it will be simply the second or third reactor to restart within the historical past of civil nuclear energy, in accordance with Mycle Schneider, main creator of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023.
“One has to know that when a nuclear reactor is closed, it’s for some motive. It isn’t closed as a result of [the utility] doesn’t like to do that anymore. In normal, probably the most outstanding motive [for closing reactors] over the previous few years was poor economics,” stated Schneider in an interview with Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
The Palisades plant produced its first electrical energy on New Year’s Eve in 1971 and has had a frighteningly lengthy historical past of shutdowns as a result of tools failures, together with leaky valves and pipes, damaged gas rods and fuel-spill incidents, as reported by the AP on the time. Its efficiency document improved within the later years of the plant’s operation.
If Holtec efficiently reopens Palisades, it will likely be capable of harvest incentives resembling a $15 per megawatt-hour manufacturing tax credit score meant to maintain the present nuclear fleet aggressive, in addition to an funding tax credit score supposed to hasten new plant building. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) helps the controversial plan and has directed $150 million to the reopening effort within the state’s funds handed in June 2023. In its heyday, the plant offered greater than 600 high-paying jobs.
Holtec has teamed with Wolverine Power Cooperative, a not-for-profit energy supplier primarily based in Michigan, in a long-term power-purchase settlement below which the co-op has agreed to purchase as much as two-thirds of the facility generated by the revitalized reactor. Hoosier Energy, Wolverine’s rural electrical cooperative undertaking companion, would buy the relaxation.
Holtec additionally plans to construct a pair of 300-megawatt SMRs on the Palisades web site, in accordance with a launch. It goals to have them up and working by mid-2030.
But the agency, which makes a speciality of nuclear waste administration and decommissioning, “isn’t a firm that has any expertise in working, even much less setting up, a nuclear energy plant,” stated Schneider.
Another reactor voted to doubtlessly come on-line sooner slightly than later is the Natrium sodium quick reactor from Bill Gates’ nuclear startup TerraPower, which we reported on intimately again in 2021. Bechtel was chosen to construct the reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming, close to the location of a soon-to-be-shut-down coal-fired energy plant.
While the world’s fleet of light-water reactors runs virtually solely on gas enriched to 3 to 5 % U-235, which is classed as low-enriched uranium, TerraPower, like many reactors within the present flock of superior nuclear aspirants, makes use of a gas referred to as high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, which is refined or enriched to a focus of as much as 20 % of the fissionable isotope.
Unfortunately, the one industrial provider of HALEU is Tenex, a Russian state-owned entity. This is a actual impediment to the rollout of those superior reactors: TerraPower delayed the deliberate begin date for its reactor by two years to safe one other gas supply.
But there may be some hope on the home HALEU provide entrance, nonetheless — for the primary time in 70 years, America is dwelling to a U.S.-owned enrichment facility producing the concentrated gas. Centrus started demonstration-scale enrichment operations at its facility in Piketon, Ohio in October of final yr, a milestone that would sign the return of an American fuel-enrichment business.
But even a home gas provide received’t have the ability to overcome unfavorable economics or the regulatory obstacles going through new reactor designs like TerraPower’s.
The GE Hitachi 300-megawatt light-water SMR was additionally talked about a variety of instances as a seemingly candidate for the following reactor to go reside. In 2022, the Tennessee Valley Authority started preparation and early licensing actions for the potential deployment of the SMR on the Clinch River Nuclear Site in Tennessee.
All of those new reactor designs face regulatory challenges, however the extra acquainted light-water designs resembling NuScale or GE Hitachi could have a shorter path to market than the superior designs developed by Natrium, X-energy and Oklo. But shorter, on this occasion, means a few years — or possibly by no means.
Which leads me again to my level.
The Natural Gas Supply Association may simply title the following gasoline turbine plant that may go browsing within the U.S. American Clean Power may let you know the following huge photo voltaic or wind farm about to get related to the grid.
So what’s the following nuclear reactor to go surfing within the U.S.?
For now, nobody appears to have a convincing reply.
