TRIDEC LOOKING AT BRINGING SMR TO HANFORD
WC Monitor
1/10/2014
The Tri-City Development Council has issued a request for proposals to analyze the pros and cons of a small modular nuclear reactor system at Hanford to provide power for Department of Energy projects. Proposals are due Jan. 17. State Sen. Sharon Brown ( R-Kennewick) made a successful budget request during last year’s Legislature for $500,000 in state money to study the manufacturing and advancement of small modular reactors in the Hanford area. That money, which comes from the state capital budget funds for economic development and job creation, will be used to pay for the TRIDEC study and then a proposal to DOE, if the study results confirm advantages of building at Hanford. “This is an opportunity I do not want to see pass us by,” Brown said.
DOE already has announced up to $452 million in matching funds for two proposals to design and license modular nuclear reactors being developed by Babcock & Wilcox and NuScale Power. But TRIDEC believes it still has time to convince DOE that Hanford is the best place for operating a small modular reactor because the DOE grants do not include site selection or construction, according to TRIDEC. A new small modular reactor, costing between $500 million and $1 billion, would create 200 to 300 construction jobs and then 100 permanent jobs to operate the plant, potentially replacing some jobs that likely would be lost at Hanford, according to TRIDEC. DOE plans to have the first small reactors operating in about a decade, about the time most Hanford cleanup other than tank waste retrieval and treatment is planned to be completed and employment is ramping down. TRIDEC believes that Hanford likely is the only DOE site additional power would be needed in the 2020s. But the final goal of both Brown and TRIDEC is to position the area they serve for a role in manufacturing or at least assembling commercial small nuclear reactors, including for export. The Tri-Cities has access to ocean-going vessels to ship the reactors to China, Korea, Japan and developing countries.
Site May Offer Cost Savings
The planned TRIDEC study would identify and evaluate the possible benefits and any significant advantages of placing a modular reactor at Hanford. Energy Northwest, which operates the Columbia Generating Station nuclear power plant on leased Hanford land, already has done a “soft analysis” that shows that existing infrastructure at its never-completed WNP-1 reactor on Hanford land could save $50 million, according to TRIDEC. The site already has been issued a Nuclear Regulatory Commission permit, which might streamline the process for licensing a small modular reactor there. There also could be additional cost savings by locating close to the Columbia Generating Station, including in emergency preparedness, nuclear security, operator training and used nuclear fuel storage. The study will look at whether the site of a second never-completed Energy Northwest reactor, WNP-4, or the former DOE Fast Flux Test Facility research reactor site could be equal to or better than the WNP-1 site. Both Energy Northwest reactor sites have infrastructure, but WNP-1 also has some buildings.
Other cost savings could be available at Hanford because of the Tri-City community’s assets, including higher education nuclear training programs, a trained nuclear work force and companies and agencies already providing support for other nuclear projects, according to TRIDEC. A power purchase agreement might be possible for the Waste Treatment Plant, scheduled to be operating in 2022, or for the Hanford 242-A Evaporator or Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. TRIDEC is interested in learning whether DOE’s Federal Energy Management Program might be a vehicle for partially financing a modular nuclear reactor by allowing energy efficiency savings at Hanford to be used for the project. DOE is preparing an environmental impact statement on extending a natural gas pipeline to central Hanford to replace the use of up to 45,000 gallons of diesel fuel to be used daily at the Waste Treatment Plant with natural gas. DOE has estimated that using natural gas would reduce the vit plant lifetime costs by $800 million to $1.2 million. The study would look at whether some of the savings could qualify under the Federal Energy Management Program to be used for a small modular reactor.
Brown became interested in finding state money for the study as she listened to testimony in the state Senate Energy Committee about small modular reactor technologies, she said. “I realized it is a bipartisan issue,” she said. “We all agree on the identification and manufacturing of safe, consistent and reliable energy.” In August Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, wrote to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, asking DOE to consider placing a small modular reactor at Hanford to help with the growing power requirements for environmental cleanup there, including at the vitrification plant. In addition most members of the Washington Congressional delegation have signed letters of support for a small modular reactor to be located at Hanford.
