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Part 2 of 3 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
Jack Taylor is the public works director for Santa Clara. He said that “We need something that’s a good baseload that we can count on for our residents here at a reasonable price that’s clean, and that’s the most exciting thing about the Carbon Free Power Project.” In spite of the October deadline having passed, Taylor said that cities could still pull out of the project after the end of October, especially if the price rises above fifty-five dollars per megawatt hour. “If we find out that the cost is over $55 per megawatt hour, then we can either bail out of it or we can say, ‘OK, if it goes up to 60, we still feel like we can afford to do that,' but each month that will be looked at.”
Considering intermittent alternative renewable power such as wind, Taylor said that Santa Clara has already sourced wind power from Idaho which is on the brink of being shut down because it is killing bats and an occasional eagle. Taylor and the majority of the Santa Clara city council members have gone to a facility in Oregon to look at the prototype of the NuScale SMR and to tour control rooms designed to run the eventual physical plant in Idaho. He thought that the Carbon Free Power Project was the best energy option right now, especially considering future growth trends and plans in the county. He said that the SMR modules are really safe and that “I think that it’s going to be the new wave all over.”
Not everyone is sold on the purported safety of this new power plant. Scott Williams is the executive director of Healthy Environmental Alliance of Utah. He told an interviewer that one major issue with the project involves a lack of transparency. UAMPS is exempt from the Open and Public Meetings Act. He said, “We don’t get minutes, we don’t get agendas.”
Williams went on to say that Santa Clara is not the only city setting a cap on financial obligations to the Carbon Free Power Project. Many other cities have passed resolutions that cap the amount of their commitment. He said that UAMPS had a meeting after the October deadline and said that the financial obligations of the cities would be kept under their new caps for the next phase of the project. The next opportunity that the cities will have to change the terms of their involvement falls near the end of 2021 or early 2022 after the next licensing phase.
UAMPS has been discussing the possibility of reducing the number of SMRs at the Idaho power plant from twelve to four or six. Williams said, “Right now, they have about 700 megawatts or more of subscription that they have to sell to make this thing work. In the last year, they’ve only sold 1 megawatt of additional subscription.”
Please read Part 3 next