A major economic bill headed to the president has “game-changing” incentives for the nuclear energy industry, experts say, and those tax credits are even more substantial if a facility is sited in a community where a coal plant is closing.
The transformative bill provides the most spending to fight climate change by any one nation ever in a single push. Among the many things, it could do nuclear energy experts say is spur more projects like one Bill Gates is planning in Kemmerer, Wyoming. Gates’ company, TerraPower, plans to build an advanced, nontraditional nuclear reactor and employ workers from a local coal-fired power plant scheduled to close soon.
Companies designing and building the next generation of nuclear reactors could pick one of two new tax credits available to carbon-free electricity generators, such as wind and solar. To ensure coal communities have a place in the energy transition, both tax credits include a 10-percentage point bonus for facilities sited where residents have relied on fossil fuel plants or mining— a “sizeable incentive” to locate them there, according to Matt Crozat, senior director for strategy and policy development at the Nuclear Energy Institute.
That could include towns in coal-dependent West Virginia since the state eliminated a ban on nuclear power plants this year. Or in Maryland, where the state announced a partnership in June to look at repurposing a fossil fuel site for a small nuclear reactor. Or in Montana, where lawmakers are looking at advanced nuclear reactors as a possible replacement for coal boilers.
“It’s a growing trend,” Qvist said, “now it’s being talked about everywhere.” Qvist is also the founder of Qvist Consulting Limited in the United Kingdom. “You have a site, you have a grid connection. You have equipment that can remain in use, and you have a workforce that could be retrained.”
A design by NuScale Power is the first to be fully certified in the United States and the company is planning to begin operating a small modular reactor in 2029 at the Idaho National Laboratory. The company’s chief financial officer, Chris Colbert, said former coal plants are ideal locations for advanced nuclear technology, in part because transmission lines are already in place.
“It’s not just nuclear, it’s not just solar, it’s all of the above, which is what we have been preaching as the right approach for decarbonization,” he said. “You need to sort of push everybody here.”
Georgia has the only nuclear project currently under construction in the U.S. Two traditional large reactors were projected to cost $14 billion and are now expected to cost more than $30 billion.
The largest public power company in the U.S. is the Tennessee Valley Authority, which launched a program this year to develop and fund new small modular nuclear reactors as part of its strategy to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The TVA is focused on GE Hitachi’s design.
