Part 3 of 3 Parts (Please read Parts 1 and 2 first)
NuScale believes its passive safety systems support its argument that it should be exempt from other nuclear reactor safety requirements. These requirements include maintaining emergency evacuation and planning zones within a ten-mile radius of the site and employing an onsite security force to prevent sabotage attempts. If NuScale has to implement these safety requirements, it might push NuScale’s projected power cost beyond the fifty-five dollars per megawatt hour that it has targeted. Lyman said, “Nuclear safety is not just design. It’s the whole set of measures.”
NuScale had hoped to have a more comprehensive stamp of government approval than the NRC safety review by now. John Hopkins is the CEO of NuScale. He testified before the U.S. House of Representatives last March. He said that parent company Fluor and investors have provided around five hundred million dollars to prepare a “design certification application,” which was submitted in 2016 and was expected to be completed by September.
However, the recent approval that NuScale received from the NRC is not a design certification application. Instead, it is a “standard design approval” said Lyman. This application has less strict rules for NRC review and allows for future changes in design. It opens up NuScale’s design to future legal challenges that a design certification approval would not.
NuScale is planning on increasing the size of its SMR units from fifty megawatts to sixty megawatts. This change will require a separate design approval review, said Lyman. Meanwhile, NuScale’s original design certification, “when it’s approved, may never actually be used,” Lyman.
NuScale’s Hughes noted that the final report from the ACRS on July 29, 2020 concluded that there is reasonable assurance that the NuScale reactor can be "constructed and operated without undue risk to the health and safety of the public.” She went on to say that the remaining issues of concern in the ACRS report will be resolved through analysis, design and testing before their SMRs are put into operation.
Unfortunately, these uncertainties have complicated the situation for UAMPS which has pushed back its deadline for finalizing it licensing agreement with NuScale from September to October 31 of this year. UAMPS could be required to invest over one hundred million dollars under the agreement which remains to be finalized.
While three cities have so far left the consortium because of their concerns about the potential cost of committing to buy power from the CFPP, another city has joined the consortium. UAMPS spokesperson Webb said that “there is no impact on the economics of the project.”
M.V. Ramana is as professor of disarmament and human security at the University of British Columbia. In a report last September, he highlighted some of the other risks facing NuScale. These include possible further delays in licensing and certification, as well as the possibility that design changes and increased safety requirements will increase the cost of power from NuScale’s SMRs. This price for electricity is already higher than the prices being set by new wind and solar installations today. Adding batteries or other new forms of energy storage to intermittent renewable may be a cheaper way to get low-carbon electricity than NuScale SMRs.
Ramana has also raised questions about the financial stability of NuScale’s parent company, engineering and construction giant Fluor. It has seen its share price fall by about eighty percent over the past two years due to rising financial losses and federal investigations into its accounting practices.
Fluor has invested more than six hundred and forty three million dollars into NuScale which has also received three hundred and fourteen million dollars in funding from the DoE, Hopkins told Congress last March. But it will need to bring in more investors in the next ten years to meet its goals.
As for the DoE cost sharing agreement, Lyman said that it was dependent on future congressional budget approvals that may not come. “The bottom line is, without a large subsidy, it would not be economical for them to buy this power.”
Lyman says that NuScale’s light water reactor technology is the most well-developed nuclear technology in the world. He added that the technology currently serves as the workhorse of the global reactor fleet. Other SMR developers are pursuing more innovative designs which have had little or no real-world operating experience. These novel designs will face steeper challenges in proving that their technology is suitable for real-world applications.