Portland, Ore.–based NuScale first earned design approval from the NRC in 2020, when the agency signed off on the firm’s original 50-MWe design. This new, uprated design will allow “Entra1 Energy Plants to provide a wider range of off-takers and consumers with reliable, carbon-free energy,” NuScale said in a news release.
Entra1 is NuScale’s partner for plans to commercialize the technology, with plans to deploy units by 2030. The plants would house six 77-MWe modules.
Quotable: “This marks a historic moment not only for NuScale but the entire industry, as NuScale and Entra1 move closer to meeting the demands of clean energy users,” said John Hopkins, NuScale chief executive. “For more than a decade, our team has proudly worked alongside the NRC to achieve the successful approval of our designs. The NRC is domestically and internationally recognized and respected for its rigorous safety standards, and this approval is a crucial step toward meeting our goal of providing clean, reliable, and, most importantly, safe energy to off-takers and consumers.”
Hopkins told Reuters last week that NuScale is in talks to build SMRs with five “tier-one hyperscalers,” but that he could not identify by name because of nondisclosure agreements.
Background: NuScale submitted its design application, featuring the same fundamental safety case and passive safety features as the previously approved design, in 2022.
The company had been working nearly a decade with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems on the Carbon Free Power Project, which aimed to deploy a set of the 77-MWe SMRs at Idaho National Laboratory, but abandoned the plan in late 2023, citing financing hardships. The reactors were intended to provide power to INL and the utility’s customers in Utah and surrounding states and were supposed to come on line in 2029.
At the time of that announcement, Hopkins expressed optimism for continuing work with other domestic and international customers “to bring our American SMR technology to market and grow the U.S. nuclear manufacturing base.”
A hot topic: Nuclear growth has been a major point of discussion in recent weeks since President Donald Trump issued four executive orders that he said will overhaul the industry and set a goal of quadrupling nuclear generation to 400 GW by 2050.
Rapid deployment of SMRs and significant growth in the U.S. nuclear supply chain and workforce are a key component of Trump’s strategy. He directed the Department of Defense to establish a nuclear energy program for domestic military bases by 2028. One order also calls for the U.S. Secretary of State to secure new international agreements to promote nuclear technology exports.
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