SUN VALLEY, IDAHO — The almighty dollar is the only thing standing in the way of Holtec International’s plans to build an advanced reactor at the site of a former New Jersey nuclear plant, the company’s CEO said here this week.
“The government is the one that has to step up” to help fund Holtec’s plan to build one of its SMR-160 advanced reactors at the former Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station, CEO Kris Singh told RadWaste Monitor after a panel Tuesday at the Nuclear Industry Council’s Advanced Reactors Summit in Sun Valley, Idaho.
“Oyster Creek has been our number one,” Singh said. “We own the plant, and the delivery system is there. We can start building tomorrow, but the problem with nuclear is cost. I’ll invest $300 million in our plant, but I can’t invest 1.2 billion.”
Holtec hasn’t been able to secure any private investment for its proposed Oyster Creek project “because they look at it as a risky proposition,” Singh said, so the company is looking to the feds for that extra funding.
Singh said that he was planning to soon meet with Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, where he plans to press the Department of Energy to help foot the bill. “You can talk all you want,” Singh said, “but the technology is ready. We can build one.”
“Currently, there is no existing or upcoming [funding opportunity announcement] or other competitive funding mechanism in place where Holtec could propose constructing the SMR-160 as a cost-shared, full demonstration partnership/project,” a spokesperson for DOE told RadWaste Monitor via email Wednesday. Details on the Office of Nuclear Energy’s industry funding opportunity, which the agency anticipates continuing in 2022, are forthcoming, the spokesperson said.
Over the last couple of years, Holtec has gotten cash from DOE to develop its nuclear technologies — bringing in around $8 million across two awards in 2018 and another $116 million award last year.
Andrea Sterdis, Holtec’s vice president of regulatory and environmental affairs, first announced in November that the company was reviewing Oyster Creek as a possible SMR site, saying that its existing grid connections and Holtec’s established relationship with the local community made it a good candidate. Holtec purchased the Forked River, N.J., plant from Exelon in 2019. The company has said it could finish decommissioning Oyster Creek by 2025 or so.
Meanwhile, Holtec would also consider similar SMR projects at some of its other decommissioning sites such as the Palisades plant in Michigan, Singh said Tuesday.
However, he said the company would not propose advanced reactors for some decommissioning sites — particularly New York’s Indian Point and Massachusetts’s Pilgrim plant — because of local resistance. “They would burn us in effigy if we even said that, never mind build one,” Singh said.
