Latest news with #UAMPS
Yahoo
26-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion: Utahns must think carefully about becoming the nation's nuclear hub
Utah's Legislature has put hope in nuclear energy as a key component of our state's future energy mix. At the start of the 2025 legislative session, Senate President Stuart Adams proclaimed that he wants Utah to be the 'nation's nuclear hub.' Governor Spencer Cox, likewise, included nuclear energy in Operation Gigawatt, an initiative aimed at doubling the state's energy production over the next 10 years. With the passage of HB249, the state created the Nuclear Energy Consortium to advise nuclear energy development in Utah. Now we must consider whether nuclear energy is right for our state. To ensure decisions about how we will power Utah's future are as democratic as possible, all Utahns should be part of the deliberation. We call on Utahns, including our Legislature, governor and the Nuclear Energy Consortium, to evaluate nuclear energy's cost, timeline and environmental impacts. We have already seen how costly nuclear development can be here in Utah. In 2015, Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) partnered with NuScale on a small modular reactor (SMR) project, planned to be at Idaho National Labs and provide power to several towns in Utah by 2030. The project was canceled in November 2023 after cost estimates increased from $3 billion to $9 billion. This failed project reveals the risk of investing millions of taxpayer dollars in technology that's yet to be implemented on a large scale. The investment required to develop nuclear power plants is massive. The state has lauded microreactors and SMRs as the stuff of the future. They claim new technology will make nuclear energy safer, easier to produce and cheaper. However, the electricity produced by UAMPS/NuScale project would have been more expensive than that produced by the most recent traditional nuclear power plant to come online in the U.S. That project was not an exception. A 2013 Union of Concerned Scientists report shows that SMRs will be more expensive than traditional nuclear plants. Developing nuclear power is costly and time-intensive. A 2014 study by Dr. Benjamin Sovacool and colleagues demonstrated that a sample of 175 nuclear reactors took on average 64% longer than projected. Dr. Arjun Makhijani argues that nuclear power is too slow and too costly to meaningfully reduce emissions, especially when renewables like solar and wind are ready now and cheaper than ever. The state's call to become a nuclear powerhouse is another iteration of the nuclear renaissance we saw in the early 2000s. However, calls for nuclear development in response to climate change then did not result in an increase in nuclear power. Nuclear consistently provides about 20% of electricity for the U.S. Skeptical public opinion, accidents at TMI and Chernobyl, cost, and long construction times have meant that only three new reactors have come online since the 1990s. Now we're seeing a new version of a call for a nuclear renaissance. In Utah, Adams said we need nuclear energy to meet the energy demand of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI requires massive amounts of power and water; experts expect power demand to skyrocket with the computing power needed for AI. Because tech companies have committed to reducing greenhouse gases, they are looking to nuclear power to supply the increased demand because, proponents argue, it can supply stable electricity that intermittent solar and wind energy cannot. However, there are other ways to provide baseload or surgable electricity, including battery storage and geothermal. Whether or not nuclear energy ends up powering AI, we should be asking ourselves if it is worth the cost and if Utah, already threatened by drought, should be seeking out such a water and energy-intensive industry. Our communities and our environment will continue to pay the price with our tax dollars, our water and our power. There is no one energy source that is inherently good. Each requires resources and has an impact on its surrounding communities and environments. If Utah is going to consider nuclear power, we call for state leaders and Utahns to engage in a nuanced and research-based analysis of its benefits and risks. Our own analysis makes us skeptical that it's the right energy source for Utah. And we're not alone — a former nuclear engineer also recently made the case against nuclear power for Utah.
Yahoo
11-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Nuclear nonproliferation panel warns Utah leaders to tread lightly
There's a reason why small nuclear reactors were developed in the 1960s and later abandoned: they were too costly. That was one cautionary tale detailed in a panel discussion hosted Monday in Salt Lake City by the Non Proliferation Education Center, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. Scott Kemp, an associate professor of nuclear science and engineering and director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy, said what is old has become 'new' again. 'There's a really deep history here that you may not know about. The fact that they're small is not in and of itself actually that new. This is where we started in the nuclear industry back in the '50s and '60s,' he said. 'But the industry, as it stretched forward, the reactors kept getting bigger and bigger. So why did we abandon these small reactors? Because they weren't capital efficient, they were too expensive. We needed to make nuclear power more affordable, and we did that by pulling more watts out of a single reactor, and that's still true today.' For small nuclear reactors to compete on a cost scale to other baseload energy and even renewables, there would be millions — many millions — of the unites that would need to be built, he asserted. In terms of costs and accountability, many pointed to the Carbon Free Power Project pursued by the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, which was shelved because not enough independent power producers took interest, and as the project progressed, the cost of energy became too high. Scott Williams, a former director of HEAL Utah that opposed the project, said one of the most troubling aspects of the the UAMPS process was its reliability on municipal investors and their lack of knowledge on the ramifications of embracing nuclear. In addition, UAMPS is not subject to Utah's open meetings law and could pursue the small modular reactor plant at Idaho National Laboratory without scrutiny, Williams said. UAMPS did have to get municipal buy-in from its participating entities, all subject to city council meetings and a vote open to the public. The project had 'off ramps' for cities that wanted to bow out because of costs, and many ultimately opted to get off the nuclear highway. Others expressed doubt over President Donald Trump's commitment to nuclear energy, especially with his 'drill baby drill' agenda. Ken Maize, proprietor of the Quad Report, a platform dedicated to in-depth analysis of energy policy and political developments, said he hasn't heard a word about nuclear from Trump. Although his newly-nominated Energy Secretary Chris Wright listed nuclear as one of his top priorities — it was down on the list as No. 7 out of a list of nine goals. Although Maize said Wright was an investor in a small modular reactor company, he does not hold out much hope for any revolutionary change in the field of nuclear energy since energy dominates the conversation when it comes to how much someone pays at the pump. 'So that leaves my bottom line, which is I don't see much coming out of Washington that will have a significant impact on nuclear energy around the rest of the country, at least not until after the 2026 midterm elections.' When pressed about Operation Gigawatt and its commitment to funding nuclear, Tim Kowalchik, an emerging technology strategist at the Utah Office of Energy Development, said Utah Gov. Spencer Cox's Operation Gigawatt is a long-range plan eying Utah's energy future down the road. The governor's budget plan aims to set aside $20 million for nuclear and a Utah lawmaker is seeking to establish a nuclear energy consortium made up of experts. Kowalchik stressed it is up to Utah lawmakers to decide how that money is spent and the consortium is meant to get the ball rolling. That is part of a bill, HB249, sponsored by Rep. Carl Albrecht, R-Richfield. 'These are exploratory steps. It's worth looking at, and at the very least, gauging the temperature.'
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Will Utah become a nuclear powerhouse some day?
A legislative bill to establish the Utah Energy Council, energy development zones and a nuclear energy consortium unanimously passed Monday out of the House Public Utilities and Energy Committee. The bill, HB249 by Rep. Carl Albrecht, R-Richfield, aims to position Utah as a player in energy innovation and foster plans for the future for microreactors or small modular reactor technology. 'We've got to start somewhere,' Albrecht told the committee. 'This will not be a plant tomorrow or the next day or the next year. This plant generation is going to be 10 to 15 years down the road, and hopefully technology improves and we generate power with zero carbon.' Utah has been identified by the IdIdaho National Laboratory as a 'first mover' state in the arena of advanced nuclear technology deployment — just one of a handful. That designation means Utah, with its research universities and all of the above energy approach is an ideal candidate to deploy nuclear to not only tamp emissions but to aid in economic development. The Frontiers Project has been working closely with Utah's congressional delegation and state representatives, as well as Utah's office of Energy Development. The state Legislature is serious about using that advantage and has taken out the notebooks and done some research. Lawmakers toured the facility west of Idaho Falls and also made a trip to the White Mesa processing mill in San Juan County. Albrecht was blunt when it came to meeting Utah's future energy needs, asserting multiple data centers want to locate here but Rocky Mountain Power lacks the capacity to meet their demand. Their solution is to get natural gas plants up and running to power their facilities, but in the long run, Albrecht said nuclear has to be part of the equation. 'So as you well know, energy production and security and reliability is a statewide issue. Utah is trying to get ahead of this. As you well know, we've got a lot of data centers that want to come to Utah. We're talking anywhere from 50 megawatts on up to 500 megawatts of power.' Albrecht conceded the bill has a lot of moving parts and is a work in progress but he was adamant. 'We have to start somewhere.' He surmised it will be tweaked and changed and evolve over the years, likely long after he has left the legislature. 'Politicians are like diapers. They need to be changed once in awhile.' He also conceded the failure of the NuScale small modular reactor planned at Idaho National Laboratory but later shelved due to costs for ratepayers of participating cities and districts. He received support, however, from the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems which pursued the Carbon Free Power Project. 'Through the process of this, of our development of the project, we realized a number of the commercial considerations related to developing new nuclear in the state,' said Michael Suarez, government affairs director for UAMPS. 'You know at UAMPS we had many municipalities lead out on this issue. You know that with Utah's pioneering spirit, we can get this done, and we can get anything done as Utahns if we're collaborating and working together. ' The bill received other praise. 'We can move forward with a stronger, more reliable and sustainable energy future, specifically on nuclear. The nuclear consortium is created here will give us a leg up, bringing together the best minds. This bill is how Utah goes nuclear,' said Joel Ferry, executive director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources which oversees the state's energy development office. Several critics, however, brought up health and safety concerns, recalling the fate of 'Utah downwinders' who suffered and died from above ground nuclear testing in Nevada. Ava Curtis gave a detailed presentation about the rampage cancer has caused in her family and the serious danger posed by exposure to nuclear radiation. 'What I'm asking from the members of this committee is to take the time to fully understand the risks of nuclear energy and to make sure that those who have been impacted by nuclear energy are voiced in this new committee, this new group that's studying this, including members of the mountain Ute tribe from white Mesa who are affected, members of the Navajo Nation, and those who've been impacted by nuclear energy and uranium refinement, such as my own family. Our voices should be heard when making energy decisions for a community.' Albrecht had his own story to tell, sympathizing with her about uranium mining during the Cold War era when his family worked in the uranium mines. 'I'm pretty close to nuclear and uranium because during the '50s and '60s, my dad had uranium mines on the San Rafael Swell. I was just a little, but I can remember going down to those mines. I had two brothers working in them, and some other relatives and people who worked for my dad, and he shipped that uranium, which was low grade uranium, to Grand Junction, Shiprock, and sold it to the U.S. government to build bombs with to end the Cold War,' Albrecht said. 'I had a brother die from cancer. Now I don't know if that was from working in the uranium mine, hauling the uranium in a truck, or from downwinders, and nobody will know to this day, but the cemeteries in southern Utah has already been alluded and they are full of people who died from cancer, all forms of cancer, because the government lied to us when they did the testing in Nevada. But we have comes a long way since then.' Utah, he added, needs to be positioned to take the leap if nuclear promises carbon free power, safety and reliability. This he stressed, is a first exploratory step.
