By Kennedy Maize — October 17, 2023
Ed. note: Nuclear Power is a much talked about technology in the current climate debate. Electricity veteran Ken Maize of Quad Report provides an update on three current nuclear issues: a new, mysterious NuScale power agreement; Plant Vogtle legal restitution; and the recommissioned 805-MW Palisades plant in Michigan.
NuScale’s Mystery Deal
NuScale Power has landed a deal with privately-owned blockchain data center developer Standard Power to provide two planned data centers in Pennsylvania and Ohio, 924-MW each, with electricity from arrays of NuScale’s 77-MW VOYGR small modular reactors, 12 for each data center. NuScale’s partner ENTRA1 Energy has the exclusive rights to develop, manage, own and operate energy production plants powered by NuScale’s SMRs.
NuScale (founded 2007) and ENTRA1 created an exclusive global partnership in 2022 to commercialize NuScale’s small modular reactors (SMRs). Standard Power describes itself as providing “blockchain miners focused on Bitcoin and other Proof of Work algorithm cryptocurrency mining an industrial scale infrastructure as a Service platform. The company provides infrastructure as a service with industrial-grade electrical and data center designs, as well as site selection based on low power costs and low environmental impact.” The company’s only identified site is 125 acres in Coshocton, Ohio, about equidistant between Columbus and Pittsburgh, Pa.
The announcement of the nascent deal produced a substantial bump in NuScale’s stock, which has been hammered for many months. The company’s 52-week high was $12.36/share. In 2022, NuScale used a “special purpose acquisition company” (SPAC) to divorce itself from Fluor Corp. NuScale’s shares (symbol: SMR) opened on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday at $4.96, up marginally from its 52-week low of $4.91. It closed on Friday at $5.76, a 23% jump.
NuScale’s press release is filled with lots of business rhetoric and standard industry buzz words: clean power, proven technology, innovative design, and so forth. But there is little detail and considerable obfuscation. The Motley Fool investment website commented, “This contract is probably worth a lot to NuScale — but how much it’s worth remains a mystery.”
No financial details are provided in the press release, nor in the company’s Oct. 6 8K filings at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Nor are there any timelines for the deal. The Motley Fool observed, “This being the case, it’s hard to say precisely what effect the contract will have on NuScale’s bottom line — or how long it will take to show up on that bottom line.” To date, NuScale has no significant earnings.
Also, NuScale has no track record. Its other deal, with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), is long delayed and losing steam. The multiple-reactor project was originally planned to be in service in 2009.
Finally, the press releases state that NuScale’s technology is the only SMR that has Nuclear Regulatory Commission design approval. True but misleading: NuScale’s 50-MW design had NRC approval. In 2020, NuScale upped its reactor design to 77 MW. In March, the NRC announced a review of the changed design, stalling the prior approval. NuScale and ENTRA1 can’t apply for a license to build and operate the reactors until that review allows.
Vogtle #3/#4 Restitution
Southern Co.’s Georgia Power will pay public power system Oglethorpe Power Corp. $413 million to settle a lawsuit over cost escalation at the $35 billion, two-unit new Vogtle nuclear power expansion. Oglethorpe, a generation and transmission cooperative, owns 30% of the 2,000-MW Vogtle project.
As part of its ownership agreement, Georgia Power agreed to limit Oglethorpe’s exposure to cost overruns for the construction of the two 1,000-MW Westinghouse AP1000 pressurized water reactors. The costs of the project ballooned, more than doubling from the initial estimate of $15 billion for the two units.
Georgia Power and Oglethorpe disagreed on how much the investor-owned utility owed in refunds to the public power system. Oglethorpe sued in July 2022, seeking $695 million. The settlement last week (Oct. 6) will award Oglethorpe $308 million for already incurred cost overruns and and $105 million for estimated future costs. According to the Associated Press, Southern Co. says it will write off a $152 million loss as a result of the settlement. The settlement provides that Georgia Power will pick up two-thirds of additional costs beyond the current estimate, according to Morningstar.
Construction on Vogle 3/4 is running seven years behind schedule and is still not complete. Unit 3 went into service July 31. At the same time of the settlement, Georgia Power announced another significant delay in finishing Unit 4. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, the utility said it has identified a “motor fault in one of four reactor coolant pumps” and will have to replace the pump. The company said it has a spare on hand and the failure is “an isolated event.” As a result, the plant will not be able to start up this year, as Georgia Power had planned, and will be delayed into “the first quarter of 2024.”
Palisades Recommissioning
Holtec International has formally applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for permission to end its decommissioning of the elderly, mothballed 805-MW Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan and near Lake Michigan and restart it. If the NRC approves restating the plant’s operating license and Holtec can line up financing, it would mark the first time a retired plant undergoing decommissioning would go back into service.
Restarting the Combustion Engineering pressurized water reactor requires the NRC to formally waive portions of its order terminating the plant’s operating license. The license “prohibits the company from operating, placing fuel into or retaining fuel in the reactor.”
Holtec acquired the plant from Entergy in June 2022 for access to the decommissioning fund. In September 2022, Holtec applied to the Department of Energy’s Civil Nuclear Credit Program for funds to restart the plant, with support from Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. DOE denied the request in November.
Michigan is providing $150 million for the restart. Early this year, Holtec applied to DOE’s Loan Programs Office for funding. Holtec in September won a long-term power purchase agreement with rural electric power cooperative Wolverine Power Cooperative.
CMS Energy of Jackson, Mich., built Palisades between 1967 and 1970 at a cost of about $1.2 billion in 2023 dollars. It went into limited service in 1971 and got a full operating license in 1973. CMS sold the plant to Entergy in 2007 for $308 million (it cost $630 million to build in 2007 dollars), along with a power purchase agreement to buy the plant’s output. In 2007, the NRC approved a license extension to 2031.
In 2018, Entergy announced it would close the plant in 2022. Whitmer in May of 2022 asked DOE for funds to keep the plant open, a move that failed. Entergy closed Palisades in May and sold it to Holtec in June.
Nuclear costs $$$ because that’s how the climate/insane want it.
News flash
Don’t be mean to the Climastrologists, Pat! They’re not ALL insane! Many are just f’ing stupid!
That doesn’t seem a very large mine, are there not other more large-scale bitcoin-rich deposits in all the United States?
OK, I understood hardly a word of this article.
I had to check to see the name of the Guest Blogger making sure that it wasn’t another Word Salad from Kamala Harris.
Lots of big computers.
A 50 MW reactor is nothing to sneeze at.
Get one in and working and making money and use this money to finance the next until you have a 1000 MW reactor
Building big reactors is too expensive with too many regulations to ever succeed in today’s government by beaurocrat.
The key to nuclear reactors is to get a design that can be built start to finish before the regulators change their mind
Adding 1 inch in height to the ceilings in your house doesn’t sound like a big change to the person not making the change.
The Navy has had reactors forever. Must be standardized by now. Pick one and go with it.
ferdberple, that’s a great comment, but way to rational to get any traction.
Military-type nuclear reactors are such an obvious solution. One wonders why noone in the US has decided to go this route.
The Russians put these kinds of small nuclear power plants on ships and offer the electricity commercially to anyone with a port.
I guess not seeking out good, available nuclear power plant designs is another consequence of Nut Zero.
Of course, now that Nut Zero appears to be failing badly at supplying electricity, people are starting to look elsewhere for the power and they are looking at nuclear now. They should have been doing this about 30 years ago. But better late than never.
” Russians put these kinds of small nuclear power plants on ships and offer the electricity commercially to anyone with a port.” excellent idea a way of financing war ships in peace full times, a pity the thrare not lecefull times at sight.
AOC says the navy needs to go EV. Possibly.
Didn’t she also say the Army needs EV tanks? What we really need is an SMR that will fit i a tank, or a fusion reactor that eats pop cans, like if Back to the Future…..
Would you like to spend the money for a nuclear-powered tank then have a drone such as being used in Ukraine take it out?
Carbon (dioxide)-free munitions and delivery systems is an oxymoron
Navy reactors are not suitable for commercial use. They are designed to meet rapidly changing power levels, which is not an economical design. When I was an operator on an SSN, we drove that reactor like a sports car on a winding mountain road.
so it may be used as electricity peak demand proveyors, instead of base suppliers
Pretty expensive peaking plant. Nat gas is cheaper.
If you want some action employ some French nuns
https://youtu.be/bRkFuEvSQ-U?si=jb4rbQCbBMyb4VCE
The wimpy enviro is clearly terrified of the nun!
Vegan.
I had a ‘flyer’ – colored brochure – of Palisades (or was it Big Rock?) nuclear plant back in the day … it showed a layout of the plant, an overheard gantry crane, the reactor etc and was rather detailed … this would have been probably grade school times for me.
There’s some good pizza down the road in Paw Paw.
Paw Paw brings up memories of picking blueberries at the blueberry farms near there, and the MI state police post located there as well (many miles were driven through there back and forth on I-94 yrs ago to the Heathkit plant located on Hilltop Rd near St. Joseph) …
Same.
How about tobogganing at Echo Valley or cardboarding/sliding/running down the dunes in Saugatuck?
Story Tip
In the UK the National Infrastructure Commission has just published its 2023 report into how the UK gets to Net Zero.
https://nic.org.uk/studies-reports/national-infrastructure-assessment/second-nia/
Doubtless Paul Homewood will do a proper analysis of it one of these days. In the meantime here are some highlights as featured in the Daily Telegraph.
Sir John Armitt, chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), warned that the supply of natural gas to all buildings must stop by 2050 if the UK is to hit its climate targets.
He is urging the Prime Minister to commit to a total ban on gas boiler sales by 2035, and to set out how the national gas network will be shut down gradually over the next 27 years.
In the national infrastructure assessment, the NIC says heat pumps are the only viable alternative to heat homes en masse and that millions of households should get subsidies worth more than £6bn to encourage their adoption.
It called for £1.3bn a year to be spent on heat pumps for poorer homes and £1.9bn on grants worth £7,000 each for other homeowners to buy the devices. A further £3.2bn a year should be spent on energy efficiency and heat pump installations for social housing, the NIC said.
Other recommendations in the NIC assessment include a call for cities to ban all vehicles except buses and taxis to cut rush-hour congestion.
[It] suggested the vast majority of pipes currently in the ground – including those supplying eight in 10 British homes – will essentially become redundant as households switch to electric-powered heat pumps.
The NIC said: “A transition away from gas heating means buildings will need to be disconnected from the gas distribution network, which, in turn, will need to be safely decommissioned unless an alternative use can be found.”
Consultants working for the NIC estimated that shutting down the gas network – a complex process that would have to be done street-by-street – will cost up to £74bn, compared to £46bn for repurposing the entire network to carry hydrogen.
However, the NIC said this masked the true cost of using hydrogen for mass heating, because producing enough through electrolysis – where water molecules are split into hydrogen and oxygen – would require enormous amounts of power.
When these costs are factored in, including additional electricity pylons and wind farms, the total cost of hydrogen heating comes out as £385bn more expensive than a system using heat pumps.
At least they have woken up to the idiocy of the great hydrogen scam.
Saving the planet…. Without nuclear, of course. Where these people think the electricity is going to come from is a mystery. Or actually, its not a mystery, they don’t really think its going to come from anywhere, and so the real conclusions hang unspoken in the air.
They are that you will take the electric bus when there is one, or mostly bike or walk when there is not, you will sit in the cold and dark every December, January and February. And you will like it, because no matter who you vote for, all political parties are committed to doing this.
Its amazing to watch them sleepwalking the country to disaster. And its amazing to realize that they really think all this will have some effect on global emissions, global climate, and even UK weather.
“you will sit STARVING in the cold and dark”
fixed it
These people are crazy. They are divorced from reality. Their sole focus is in reducing CO2 output and the consequences of doing so don’t seem to have dawned on them.
All based on the unsubstantiated assumption that CO2 needs to be reduced.
Western leaders have been totally taken with this CO2 delusion and are seriously damaging their economies and societies and their children’s psychology as a result.
Tom,
They have been largely hypnotized by their “educators!” This is why it is so difficult to convince them that Climageddon is a hoax, and that the Dread CO2 is beneficial!
Nut Zero and other “Green” phantasms are like the large sacrificial pyramids of Meso-America; only the masses will be underneath, trying to carry the weight on their backs, while the elites cavort around the apex; continuing to enjoy their highly decadent lifestyle!
Most of the true believers will only waken from their trance when they begin to feel themselves crushing under the weight; most of the elite know that there is no emergency, just an opportunity to increase their power and wealth at the expense of the common man!
Coal is just trees that nature compressed and heated for easier storage.
It’s as green as trees.
does anybody in this world do anything for any of the right reasons any more
I do, but that’s just me.
A lot of people do things for the right reasons, it’s just that this doesn’t apply to our current crop of politicians, for the most part.
We are in the depths of a Western Democracy Idiocracy driven by CO2-phobia.
Abraham Lincoln said, ‘You can fool all people some of the time and some people all the time. But you can never fool all people all the time.’
Inventory of EVs on dealer lots are building as EV plant builds are halted or slowed. The latest CV booster uptake in U.S. around 2%.
Yes, dictating to consumers does not work out too well in the United States.
Biden’s stupidity is going to ruin the American car manufacturing business. Assisted by Labor Unions continuing to strke the car companies. They are going to strike themselves right out of a job.
This is the Age of Cluster B Peronality Disorders!
Between 24/7 news porn, highly addictive personal devices, and the devolution of our schools into indoctrination factories; we are seeing a near geometric increase in mental problems and personality disorders! And to make matters worse, mental problems are more often celebrated than treated nowadays!
Small wonder then that politicians with Narcissistic or Anti-Social an other PDs are becoming commonplace throughout the West, while the lapdog media gently and carefully lick the hands that feed them!
How sad that NuScale sounds more like a scammer than a legitimate business. I sure hope they don’t become an impediment to the development of SMRs, an idea whose time is NOW!
Curses and other words!!
I saw the word NuScale and thought it was a re hash of the N Scale model railway system, something between N scale an Z scale.
Based on the linked article it would seems Motley Fool sees it as a nuclear power source not worth spending big money on its shares.
Again NuScale as a model rail system sits in the same boat, not worth the money.
But I digressed a bit ..
Blockchain. Heck, I used to think I was on top of the latest computer and tech lingo- but at the age of 74, my brain hit the limit- I have NO idea what a blockchain is. I’ve tried reading about it but it won’t sink in.
What’s a 14-year delay compared to fusion? I guess commercial fusion is already about 30 years past the first 40-year estimates from the 1950s and at least …infinite?…years until it will ever be financially viable.
The big difference is that SMRs could have been in widespread use by now except that the Nuclear Prevention Commission (aka Nuclear Regulatory Commission) was tireless in their efforts.
Want to do a comparison? Look at the several off-site demos Brilliant Light Power has done versus NuScale’s demos; which one is the ‘vaporware’ now? Just asking, as *I have no dog in this fight. Are there any demos where NuScale showed a reactor going critical?
*Virtue signalling now.
BLP doesn’t have to appease the NRC. ‘nuf said.
If and when fusion is figured out, and then a workable commercial version developed – no small feat there – the NRC will work tirelessly to make sure that fusion remains the hope of the future – and is never realized in the present…
From the article: “As part of its ownership agreement, Georgia Power agreed to limit Oglethorpe’s exposure to cost overruns for the construction of the two 1,000-MW Westinghouse AP1000 pressurized water reactors. The costs of the project ballooned, more than doubling from the initial estimate of $15 billion for the two units.
CMS Energy of Jackson, Mich., built Palisades between 1967 and 1970 at a cost of about $1.2 billion in 2023 dollars.”
Why such a huge difference in price?
How much does it cost to build a Canadian Candu nuclear power plant?
They borrowed money to finance the construction and the interest meter is always running and doesn’t care about any delays.
Another issue that probably affects it is skilled labour shortages and rising wages.
Nuclear is still in its infancy – the governments and industry should be working to refine the design to an efficient and safe standard model that then can be reproduced quickly without requiring re-investigation by the NRC of every nut and bolt.
Further, the idea of building a manageable size reactor in a factory and shipping out the finished units is genius – one doesn’t have to find skilled labour in every area to handle the construction.
However, large GW+ reactors have an economy of scale advantage (as long as there are no delays) – the Koreans have done an excellent job – have a look at their show piece in the UAE.
In the above article, under
“The costs of the project ballooned, more than doubling from the initial estimate of $15 billion for the two units.”
“The world’s first-full scale commercial PWR nuclearpower plant was (according to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission) the world’s first full-scale atomic electric power plant devoted exclusively to peacetime uses. It was located near the present-day Beaver Valley Nuclear Generating Station on the Ohio River in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, United States.
“The first electrical power was produced on December 18, 1957.”
—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shippingport_Atomic_Power_Station
Ooops . . . my apologies, I inadvertently hit the “Post Comment” button before I had completed my comment.
Here is the full comment:
In the above article, under
“The costs of the project ballooned, more than doubling from the initial estimate of $15 billion for the two units.”
The world’s first-full scale, commercial PWR nuclear power plant devoted exclusively to peacetime uses was (according to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission) the Shippingport Atomic Power Station. It was located near the present-day Beaver Valley Nuclear Generating Station on the Ohio River in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, United States. Its first commercial electrical power output was December 18, 1957.
—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shippingport_Atomic_Power_Station
A total of 86 operational nuclear power plants have been built in the US, with a number of these having two or more separate nuclear reactors.
So with more than 65 years of designing and building approximately 100 nuclear power reactors across the US, most of which are PWR-design type, industry and governments are still unable to estimate the cost of such within a factor of two???
Just incredible.
Nuclear energy is still at the beta level. They should never have been mass produced at the GW scale – there should have been more small scale units research done until high-temp breeder units (like the molten salt reactors, but not only them) were developed.
I know the existing units “are good enough” to make money, but people have this expectation or belief that the overly complicated units now in existence are somehow a perfected, evolved design. Nukes are at the stage steam power was in ~1763 – i.e. pre- James Watt.
The issue is there is no so-called climate emergency. Arguing the details of how to respond to it, accepts the premise, when we should reject it.
This is exactly what the deranged loons want, to make it about the minutiiæ, not the clear lack of supporting evidence and failure of their predictions of doom.
Never do what your enemy wants.
“The issue is there is no so-called climate emergency. Arguing the details of how to respond to it, accepts the premise, when we should reject it.”
Excellent point!
A DATA CENTER needs 900 some megawatts? WTF? What are they doing, electric furnace iron smelting? Aluminum production? Sea-water distillation?
Mining Bitcoin – oops their value is in the toilet now.
Maybe they are working hard on hacking bank accounts.
That euphemistically-titled “data center” is devoted to the mining of cryptocurrencies. Doing so requires truly massive computing power, analogous to sophisticated code breaking.
A mid-range gaming PC cost about $1,000, runs at about 5–10 teraflops and consumes about 200 watts of power. For example, the Playstation PS5 GPU is rated at 10.3 terraflops and its maximum power consumption is listed as 372 watts.
Using cheaper commercially- available high end “home computers” (i.e., the most powerful Playstation), the 900-some megawatts would be equivalent to a complex of 2.4 million home computers linked together in parallel processing mode, assuming all 900 MW was used just for computing. So, obviously, the “data center” ties together computers more powerful that home PCs.
My SWAG is that only half of that power would be available to the computers, the rest being needed for cooling of the “data center”.
People can like it or not but nuclear is the future.
NuScale was one of the early superstars of SMR development but they are falling way short on their promises. Hopefully this deal will help them continue to develop the technology, but industrial scale cryptocurrency mining? It’s the most overhyped technology in recent history. It consumes staggering amounts of electricity as evidenced by the power requirements for this facility and has no practical purpose. Its primary function is to serve as another (ethereal) asset for speculators to bet on.
The theory of democracy is that the rulers are temporary, appointed by and dismissed by the voters and only allowed to rule with the consent of the people. The reality in Western democracies is that we have a cadre of elites who feel once they are elected that their job is to ram their own insane ideas down the throats of the electorate while gradually dismantling any safety mechanism that could see them removed from power. This combined with the fact they have no critical thinking skills and have lived a life without accountability means their ideas are the fuel of civil destruction.