Two interesting nuclear events occurred roughly two months ago: South Africa’s Energy Minister proclaimed that South Africa was seeking offers of up to 12 small nuclear reactors to add 2,500 gigawatts to its grid; and the United States’ International Development Finance Corporation (IDFC, or DFC) moved decisively to end the ban from the Obama Administration on financing nuclear power development projects abroad. IFDC was actually a new and better capitalized successor to the old Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), and was created by bipartisan legislation pushed through by the Trump White House in 2018 (that’s right, bipartisan). DFC came to be referred to as “America’s development bank” by its head, Adam Boehler. It has just taken on transport infrastructure projects in Serbia and Kosovo as part of the Trump Administration’s mediation effort between them.
These two steps toward advanced nuclear reactors are now bearing fruit. NuScale Power LLC, the only company thus far to have NRC approval for its small modular reactor (SMR) design, has gotten a letter of intent for the 2500 MW project in South Africa from the U.S. DFC. Neutron Bytes reported Oct. 18 DFC’s letter of intent to support Oregon-based NuScale in developing the 2,500 megawatts of power with 720MW nuclear plants comprised of twelve 60MW SMRs. Just days earlier, it reported, the U.S. Department of Energy committed $1.355 billion to Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems to keep it on track as NuScale’s first U.S. customer for its 720MW plant SMR . That 12 SMR plant will be built at DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory for UAMPS subsidiary Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP). Electricity from the plant will be distributed to customers of 33 of UAMPS member utilities in five states.
The South African program was seeking power from independent power providers (IPPs) like NuScale, and its time scale is not yet definite. In a statement to Bloomberg News Oct. 16, NuScale said, “If successful, NuScale would be the first U.S. nuclear energy IPP on the continent and would help support energy resilience and security in one of Africa’s leading economies.” The letter of intent is not yet a funding commitment.
