TVA tower in downtown Knoxville: Tour of the renovated ninth floor
Tricia Roelofs, senior director of facilities at TVA, explains the renovations of the ninth floor for River Forecast Center and for other employees.
- The U.S. Department of Energy reissued a funding opportunity for small modular reactors without Biden’s “community benefit plan.”
- TVA led a team to apply for $800 million in January, but must resubmit the application by April 23.
- TVA’s first small modular reactor could come online by 2033 with the funding, the utility said.
- Tennessee elected officials want the project finished as soon as possible and pushed for new TVA leadership.
The Tennessee Valley Authority and its nuclear partners must reapply for $800 million of federal funding for their small modular reactor project in Oak Ridge after the U.S. Department of Energy revised the application to remove community engagement and equity requirements.
TVA led a team that included Bechtel, a construction firm with expertise in nuclear projects, and the state of Tennessee to apply in January for funding from the Department of Energy’s Generation III+ Small Modular Reactor Program, which stems from a bipartisan infrastructure law passed under the Biden administration.
The application opened last year to teams led by utilities in a race to put the first U.S. small modular reactors online.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright has continued his predecessor’s support of new nuclear energy but added a twist: the new solicitation for applications does not require a so-called “community benefit plan.”
The plan weighed 20% of the application and included “local engagement, alignment of community benefits with community priorities, quality local jobs, and support for underrepresented groups,” according to the American Nuclear Society.
Ben Dietderich, chief spokesperson for the Department of Energy, said in an emailed statement the eliminated requirement was a Biden-era diversity, equity and inclusion mandate.
“The Trump administration has modified the solicitation process to ensure potential (small modular reactor) first-movers are judged solely based on technical merit,” Dietderich said.
“With President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Energy is accelerating the development of American nuclear technology and ensuring the American people’s access to reliable, abundant and affordable energy is the number one priority of all Energy Department projects,” he added.
All applicants must reapply, and new applicants are eligible. The TVA-led team will reapply by the April 23 deadline, said TVA spokesperson Scott Fiedler.
TVA and its partners appeared to have the most developed of the publicly announced applicants. The utility began actively exploring options for advanced nuclear reactors in 2010.
Winning the funding could shave two years off the federal utility’s timeline, allowing it to bring the first reactor online by 2033. The program is meant to cover less than half the overall project’s cost. TVA’s first GE Hitachi BWRX-300 reactor could cost around $5.4 billion, according to the utility’s planning data.
“I can confirm that we are reviewing the reopened grant application and will reapply by the deadline,” Fiedler told Knox News.
The previous application was aligned with the Biden administration’s Justice40 initiative, which aimed to direct 40% of all federal funding for clean energy and sustainability projects to “disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.”
Nuclear tech at center of TVA political upheaval
The Trump administration’s focus on “unleashing American energy” includes new nuclear technologies with a particular focus on small modular reactors to power artificial intelligence data centers. The smaller nuclear plants could one day be assembled faster and located flexibly.
Wright, the energy secretary, compared the race with China for AI dominance to the race with Nazi Germany to build the world’s first atomic bomb. He visited to Oak Ridge early in his tenure on Feb. 28 and stopped at the Clinch River Nuclear Site.
“We’re at the start of Manhattan Project Two. It is critical, just like Manhattan Project One, that the United States wins this race,” Wright said. “We could lose this race in many ways if we don’t get energy right, we don’t unleash American energy, (if) we can’t win the race for artificial intelligence.”
U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty called nuclear energy “the most cutting-edge, the most stable, the most nonpolluting energy source available in the world” during the secretary’s visit.
He co-wrote an op-ed with Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee calling for the Trump administration to replace TVA leaders with a goal to speed up new nuclear development.
Since POWER Magazine published to the op-ed on March 20, the Trump administration has fired TVA board member Michelle Moore and board chair Joe Ritch. Blackburn and Hagerty supported the terminations in a joint statement sent to Knox News on April 2.
“The Trump administration’s decisive actions to shake up the status quo at the TVA will allow us to confirm new board members who will champion the future of Tennessee’s energy needs and ensure our state leads the way in nuclear energy. We can’t let this moment pass us by,” the senators said.
Tennessee elected officials hope to capitalize on a nationwide trend toward more funding and enthusiasm for new nuclear technologies as a source of steady carbon-free energy. Gov. Bill Lee put $92.6 million in his latest budget proposal to support nuclear projects, including $50 million for TVA’s Clinch River project.
New nuclear licensing is typically a slow process. TVA submitted an early site permit for the Clinch River project to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in May 2016 and did not receive the permit until December 2019.
The TVA board has approved $350 million for the project since the utility secured the nation’s first early site permit for small modular reactors. TVA plans to submit a construction permit to the commission this year and to begin early site preparations and excavation in 2026.
Two other teams said they had applied for the Department of Energy funding. Constellation Energy said it would use the funds to pursue an early site permit for an advanced reactor at Nine Mile Point in upstate New York, while three Arizona utilities said they would explore potential sites for new reactors.
Daniel Dassow is a growth and development reporter focused on technology and energy. Email: daniel.dassow@knoxnews.com. Signal: @danieldassow.24.
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