Nuclear Power

Click here to read more about why we're considering nuclear power. 

No location has been determined. Project site location will be decided by Grant County PUD with input from a variety of stakeholders.

Definitely Billions with a B. We are looking at an overnight capital cost of about $3.5 Billion for a 12 module Nuscale plant. It is not currently known what the same cost would be for any other small modular reactor.

Grant PUD is exploring this nuclear power option as a way to keep rates low in the future, while meeting our customers’ growing power demands. Customers in our core group – residential, irrigation and small business – have price protections based on board policy. This policy ensures that core customers will be first in line to receive the pricing benefit of generation at our dams, while larger load customers would pay for additional power generation costs to meet their needs beyond what is produced at our dams.

Existing nuclear energy facilities are already extremely safe and the industry continuously evaluates and implements new procedures, systems and technologies to address any potential event. Through innovative designs and fuels, advanced nuclear energy technologies take safety to another level. The Xe-100 reactor utilizes TRISO fuel, which cannot overheat, making this reactor walk-away safe (meaning the plant atomically shuts down without any human action). The inherent safety of the fuel, combined with other safety features – such as the use of helium instead of water – makes this the safest nuclear energy design to date.

NuScale made history in August of 2020 as the first ever small modular reactor design approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), having been the first and only small modular reactor (SMR) design to undergo Design Certification review by the NRC. NuScale Power Modules can shut-down and self‐cool for an unlimited period of time, with no operator action, no need for additional water,and no need for electricity. This capability is accomplished through the use of a simplified, fully passive safety system design that uses natural forces of physics (e.g., convection, conduction and gravity) rather than outside power sources and equipment to provide the means to maintain the safety of the reactors. The design presents safety performance orders of magnitude improved over the existing fleet of nuclear power plants operating today.

This is a very difficult question to definitively answer. It depends on the type of reactor, where we put it, political will, social will, funding, and several other factors. We know as a district we are looking at a need for new generation becoming reality somewhere in the 2028-30 range. Our hope is to meet this forecasted shortfall with new small modular nuclear reactors. We will have to work very hard to meet this goal. The actual construction timeline for the 2 leading reactor designs is only known for 1 of the designs currently. The current Nuscale construction estimate is about 6 years

Grant PUD is evaluating multiple companies to determine which partnership will be the most beneficial. Grant PUD is presently working with Energy Northwest and X-Energy on a possible project called the Tri-Energy Partnership. Grant PUD is also exploring a possible project with NuScale Power.

It is Grant PUD’s intention to have an ownership stake in the proposed plant. With multiple promising structures, and time for continued evaluation, the partners will work together to identify the best fit for the project and the region’s future clean energy needs.

We are exploring nuclear power as a resource that would be owned and operated by Grant PUD. That would mean Grant PUD would need to hire employees to operate and support such a plant.

Yes. The reactor vendors, especially Nuscale, have spent considerable resources determining prospective staffing levels for operations. The numbers will almost certainly change, but the estimate with rounding for a 12 module Nuscale plant is about 150 FTE staff.

Compared to the existing fleet of nuclear energy reactors, advanced and small modular reactors will be easier, faster and more affordable to build since they can be manufactured off-site and then be assembled at the project location. These savings, combined with lower operating costs – resulting from a smaller footprint, design improvements and safety enhancements – provide significant cost reductions. 

Theoretically, nuclear energy could replace all of the output from carbon-emitting resources that are retired. From a technical standpoint, replacing these plants with advanced reactors is not only possible, but would provide additional benefits (reliability, dispatchability, and economic benefits such as jobs, economic activity, construction, and development). However, the most practical, feasible, and achievable option is a combination of new advanced nuclear generation and renewables.

Theoretically, nuclear energy could replace all of the output from carbon-emitting resources that are retired. From a technical standpoint, replacing these plants with advanced reactors is not only possible, but would provide additional benefits (reliability, dispatchability, and economic benefits such as jobs, economic activity, construction, and development). However, the most practical, feasible, and achievable option is a combination of new advanced nuclear generation and renewables.

Using the Nuscale reactor as an example to answer this question, each module is rated to generate up to 77 MWe. The plan is to build a facility that will eventually house 12 modules. Therefore, the total electrical capacity of a fully constructed and operational 12 module plant is 924MWe. The nameplate capacity for Priest and Wanapum are 950MWe and 1200MWe, respectively.

There are currently 2 in operation, both Russian liquid sodium cooled fast reactors.

FFTF – Fast Flux Test Facility was our US competing test reactor that operated down at Hanford until 1992. This wasn’t explicitly a breeder reactor per say, but it was used extensively for testing the physics and materials needed to build a commercial breeder reactor.

The nuclear fuel useful lifetime is dictated by how much power(heat) is generated by the fuel. There is a finite amount of Uranium loaded into each fuel pellet and accordingly each fuel rod. Once the Uranium is depleted below a certain threshold the reactor can no longer support the fission chain reaction required to maintain steady state operations. Once enough Uranium is consumed, it becomes necessary to replace the fuel assembly with more reactive, fresh fuel. The spent fuel is highly radioactive after it is used. A huge amount of this radioactivity is from relatively short-lived fission products. So we choose to keep the fuel underwater until this reactivity drops off to make the fuel easier to handle at which time we load it into dry casks for long term storage above ground and without water present.

Fun fact: After the fuel is consumed it still contains about 95% of the useful Uranium. So, if we chemically reprocessed this fuel, we could recover all that useful Uranium and reduce how much we have to go dig out of the ground and the volume of waste going into long term storage.

This table breaks down how much Uranium is produced and by what country. The same webpage goes on to provide a bunch of additional information regarding Uranium mining. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/mining-of-uranium/world-uranium-mining-production.aspx

World Uranium Mining Production

(Updated September 2021)

• Over two-thirds of the world's production of uranium from mines is from Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia.
• An increasing amount of uranium, now over 50%, is produced by in situ leaching.

In 2020 Kazakhstan produced the largest share of uranium from mines (41% of world supply), followed by Australia (13%) and Canada (8%).

Production from mines (tonnes U)

* Data from the World Nuclear Association. NB: the figures in this table are liable to change as new data becomes available.