Conceptual art of the Clinch River SMR site. (Image: TVA)
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have completed a draft supplemental environmental impact statement for a small modular reactor at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Clinch River nuclear site in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
TVA applied for a construction permit for a GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300 in May. Once completed, the SMR will be the first utility-scale unit to come on line in the United States. It will be the second in North America, following Ontario Power Generation’s planned BWRX-300 reactor at its Darlington nuclear site in Ontario, Canada.
The draft SEIS was published in the Federal Register today, and public comments are due December 22.
The design: The BWRX-300 is a 300-MWe SMR designed with built-in natural circulation and passive cooling technology and an expected lifespan of 60 years. TVA is one of the entities that has applied for a $900 million grant with the Department of Energy to deploy next-generation SMRs.
In its initial application, TVA said the grant funding would help accelerate SMR construction at Clinch River by two years, making commercial operation of the units possible by 2033.