NuScale - Small Modular Reactor (SMR) Nuclear Technology
Client: NuScale Power, LLC
Location: Portland, OR, U.S.
In 2011, Fluor Corporation made a significant investment in NuScale Power, a small modular reactor (SMR) technology company headquartered in Oregon.
With the investment, Fluor is NuScale's majority shareholder. NuScale continues to operate as an independent company with Fluor providing certain needed services to NuScale through a separate contractual arrangement.
NuScale Power has developed a new modular light water reactor nuclear power plant to supply energy for electrical generation, district heating, thermal desalination and other process heat applications.
This SMR design includes a fully factory-fabricated NuScale Power Module ™ (NPM) capable of generating 77 MWe of electricity (gross) using a safer, smaller and scalable version of pressurized water reactor technology. NuScale's scalable VOYGR ™ power plant design can house up to 4, 6 or 12 power modules, offers the benefits of carbon-free energy and reduces the financial commitments associated with gigawatt-sized nuclear facilities.
SMR-generated power is 100% carbon-free. The 12-module VOYGR ™-12 plant produces 924 MWe (gross) and can power over 700,000 homes in the U.S. with carbon-free electricity. This would reduce CO2 emissions by eight million tons per year as compared to coal, the equivalent of taking 1.7 million cars off the road per year.
In August 2020, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) completed the Phase 6 review of the Design Certification Application for the 50 MWe version of NuScale's SMR with the issuance of the Final Safety Evaluation Report (FSER). The NRC issued a Standard Design Approval (SDA) for NuScale's SMR design in September 2020. Along with issuance of the FSER, the SDA affirms NRC approval of the NuScale design.
In October 2020, Fluor announced that Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) was awarded a funding vehicle that could provide up to $1.355 billion from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for NuScale Power's first VOYGR plant. Fluor is poised to assist UAMPS and NuScale in bringing the world's first clean energy, carbon-free SMR project to commercialization. Fluor and NuScale are working with UAMPS in the development of the Carbon Free Power Project, a six-module, 462-megawatt VOYGR-6 plant in Idaho, which once completed will provide reliable, cost-competitive, base load, carbon-free electricity to UAMPS member participants.
By the end of 2021, NuScale had secured 18 signed and active memorandums of understanding with customers in 11 countries interested in and considering deployment of a NuScale power plant.
