NuScale Power, the Utah company that had made the most progress in developing Small Nuclear Reactors, announced Wednesday that it had failed to maintain enough interest from utilities to continue funding the project.
NuScale’s announcement came one day before the Illinois General Assembly voted to lift the state’s moratorium on the building of nuclear power plants. NuScale’s project was touted by proponents as an example of the type of technology that would be made possible by lifting the ban.
Despite receiving nearly a billion dollars in subsidies, the company lost the confidence of utilities that had subscribed to buy power from the company when it went online.
The project was not going to be ready to produce commercially available energy until 2030 at the earliest, and in January, the company raised its target price for power from the plant to $89 per megawatt hour. Renewable sources of energy like wind and solar cost less than half that amount and are getting cheaper, while NuScales cost estimates have never been competitive.
After the Illinois General Assembly agreed to lift the moratorium in Illinois, Republican State Sen. Sue Rezin said, “Our nuclear submarines and our aircraft carriers have been using this type of nuclear for many, many years. What we would like to do is commercialize that technology.”
However, nuclear power plants operated by the military use technologies and materials prohibitively expensive for civilian use, which is one reason NuScale was unsuccessful in developing a viable nuclear reactor for over a decade.
