SMR plant cutaway (Courtesy: NuScale).
NuScale Power and Doosan reached an agreement for Doosan to begin producing materials for NuScale’s small modular reactors (SMRs), with full-scale equipment manufacturing expected by the second half of 2023.
Doosan would produce forging dies for NuScale’s upper reactor pressure vessel. The materials produced will support Portland, Oregon-based NuScale’s first commercial deployment of its VOYGR power plant for Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems’ (UAMPS) Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP) at the Idaho National Lab (INL).
Doosan completed a manufacturability review for NuScale’s power module in January 2021 and is now working on the module components’ prototype development. The Korean company made an initial investment in NuScale in 2019.
The CFPP project’s first module is projected to come online in 2029, with all six modules online by 2030. In March, we reported that Xcel Energy could operate the plant.
As reported last July, UAMPS, a cooperative which received close to $1.3 billion in federal funding to pursue the SMR project, would decrease the size of the proposed plant from 12 to six small reactor modules. UAMPS said the move would cut capacity of the plant from about 600 MW to 462 MW.
NuScale touts its reactors as “smarter, cleaner, safer and cost competitive,” adding that the SMRs are well suited for placement at retiring coal plant sites, preserving critical jobs in the energy industry and helping communities decarbonize.
In 2020, NuScale received U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval on its SMR design, the first design approval for a small commercial nuclear reactor. SMRs have a smaller footprint, capacity and anticipated cost than traditional high-capacity nuclear power plants.
