You’re out of free articles.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Sign In or Create an Account.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Welcome to Heatmap
Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here .
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Subscribe to get unlimited Access
Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Create Your Account
Please Enter Your Password
Forgot your password?
Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:
The nation’s largest public power provider just applied to build a small modular reactor.
Can the nuclear renaissance be publicly owned? And will the Trump administration let it?
That’s the question facing the Tennessee Valley Authority as it continues its long-gestating project to build a small modular nuclear reactor, or SMR, to complement its already sizable nuclear fleet. On Tuesday, the project reached another milestone when the public power company applied for a construction permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a facility for GE Vernova Hitachi’s BWRX-300 reactor at a site on Tennessee’s Clinch River.
Because of the long lead times for nuclear projects and the promise (for now, at least) of government support, how developers talk about them tends to change along with the partisan revolutions of power.
TVA has been considering the Clinch River site for new nuclear since 2010, applied for an early site permit from the NRC in 2016, and received it in 2019. When TVA announced in 2022 that it would spend another $150 million on the project, in addition to the $200 million that had already been authorized, the public utility’s then-CEO Jeff Lyash justified the investment as part of an overall effort to convert America to clean energy. “We believe advanced nuclear technologies will play a critical role in our region and nation’s drive toward a clean energy future,” he said. The following year, when then-Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm visited the Clinch River site, the TVA touted how new nuclear generation would reduce the system’s overall carbon emissions.
As the project marches on under Donald Trump, however, the emissions talk is gone.
In Tuesday’s announcement, “carbon,” “emissions,” and even “clean” go unmentioned. Instead the construction application is “TVA’s next step in … establishing America’s energy dominance to power artificial intelligence, quantum computing and advanced manufacturing.”
American energy — and nuclear — policy is in flux, but rhetoric aside, TVA’s nuclear ambitions appear to be an area of continuity between the Trump and Biden administrations. The Trump White House is reportedly working on a series of executive actions to speed up regulatory approvals for nuclear projects and remove some of the NRC’s power and independence.
At the same time, energy policy experts have lambasted Republicans in Congress for their proposed cuts to the Loans Program Office and phase-out of tax credits for nuclear power. Contra the legislative winds, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said Tuesday that he supports “every incentive” for nuclear power, and that he favors extending tax credits for nuclear and geothermal for another 15 years while more quickly phasing out wind and solar credits.
While this is not the first construction permit application for a SMR, it is the first for a utility that seeks to connect the planned reactor to the grid. Both the Bill Gates-backed TerraPower and the partnership of X-Energy and Dow have applied for construction permits for reactors.
The TVA application is another step in a long journey towards new nuclear for the power authority, which is one of two organizations to actually turn on a nuclear plant in the United States this century. It’s also a big step for Ontario Power Generation, TVA’s Canadian counterpart, which recently received a construction permit from Canadian regulators to build a BWRX-300. By building the same design multiple times in sequence — first in Ontario, then in Oak Ridge, and then hopefully in Ontario again — the projects’ developers hope to be able to apply lessons learned from one reactor to the next, as well as shuttle specialized workers back and forth between construction sites.
“If you flip flop sites, they can transition from one site that’s ready to another site that’s ready for the stage that needs that speciality. That’s better utilization of workforce and supply chain,” Adam Stein, director of the nuclear energy innovation program of the Breakthrough Institute, told me.
GE-Hitachi, meanwhile, applied to the NRC for a license for its SMR design in 2019. Despite all the excitement and investment around SMRs, there is only one licensed design, NuScale’s US600 — and no current plans for anyone to build it.
The fastest the Clinch River project could actually go into operation is about five years, Stein told me. “A construction permit is part of a two-step licensing process. You get a construction permit, and then you’re allowed to start building the plant. Then you need to get an operating license,” he explained.
The environmental review should go quickly, Stein said, because TVA already has its site permit. “They should be able to do less intensive environmental review to make sure that nothing changed in the application versus what it’s already approved,” Stein added.
While TVA is a government entity, it funds itself and operates independently, albeit with a presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed board. The board currently does not have a quorum thanks to the Trump administration firing two Biden-appointed members, and would not be able to make a final investment decision on the project until it adds new members. The firings came after Tennessee’s two Republican senators, Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn, wrote an op-ed criticizing the TVA for moving too slowly on its SMR work. TVA also has a new chief executive, Dan Moul, who took over in March, after Lyash announced in January that he intended to resign and looked forward to “spending more time with family.”
Nuclear already comprises over 40% of TVA’s generation capacity. The utility has asked for assistance from the Department of Energy to increase that, including an $800 million grant to help speed up construction at Clinch River and an $8 million grant to specifically defray licensing costs for the SMR.
The Trump administration has shown some friendliness to Biden-era nuclear initiatives, including honoring a loan guarantee to restart the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan.
Considering the long and uncertain time frame for building any nuclear reactor, it’s almost certain that, if TVA’s application is approved, the project will be completed under a different president than Trump. By then, it might be a carbon-free and emissions-reducing one again.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
The collateral damage from the Lava Ridge wind project might now include a proposed 285-mile transmission line initially approved by federal regulators in the 1990s.
The same movement that got Trump to kill the Lava Ridge wind farm Trump killed has appeared to derail a longstanding transmission project that’s supposed to connect sought-after areas for wind energy in Idaho to power-hungry places out West.
The Southwest Intertie Project-North, also known as SWIP-N, is a proposed 285-mile transmission line initially approved by federal regulators in the 1990s. If built, SWIP-N is supposed to feed power from the wind-swept plains of southern Idaho to the Southwest, while shooting electrons – at least some generated from solar power – back up north into Idaho from Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. In California, regulators have identified the line as crucial for getting cleaner wind energy into the state’s grid to meet climate goals.
But on Tuesday, SWIP-N suddenly faced a major setback: The three-person commission representing Jerome County, Idaho – directly in the path of the project – voted to revoke its special use permit, stating the company still lacked proper documentation to meet the terms and conditions of the approval. SWIP-N had the wind at its back as recently as last year, when LS Power expected it to connect to Lava Ridge and other wind farms that have been delayed by Trump’s federal permitting freeze on renewable energy. But now, the transmission line has stuttered along with this potential generation.
At a hearing Tuesday evening, county commissioners said Great Basin Transmission, a subsidiary of LS Power developing the line, would now suddenly need new input, including the blessing of the local highway district and potential feedback from the Federal Aviation Administration. Jerome County Commissioner Charles Howell explained to me Wednesday afternoon that there will still need to be formal steps remanding the permit, and the process will go back to local zoning officials. Great Basin Transmission will then at minimum need to get the sign-offs from local highway officials to satisfy his concerns, as well as those of the other commissioner who voted to rescind the permit, Ben Crouch.
The permit was many years old, and there are outstanding questions about what will happen next procedurally, including what Great Basin Transmission is actually able to do to fight this choice by the commissioners. At minimum, staff for the commission will write a formal decision explaining the reasoning and remand the permit. After that, it’ll be up to Great Basin Transmission to produce the documents that commissioners want. “Even our attorney and staff didn’t have those answers when we asked that after the vote,” Howell said, adding that he hopes the issues can be resolved. “I was on the county commission about when they decided where to site the towers, where to site the right-of-ways. That’s all been there a long time.”
This is the part where I bring up how Jerome County’s decision followed a months-long fight by aggrieved residents who opposed the SWIP-N line, including homeowners who say they didn’t know their properties were in the path of the project. There’s also a significant anti-wind undercurrent, as many who are fighting this transmission line previously fought LS Power’s Lava Ridge wind project, which was blocked by and executive order from President Donald Trump on his first day in office. Jerome County itself passed an ordinance in May requiring any renewable energy facility to get all federal, state, and local approvals before it would sign off on new projects.
Opposition to SWIP-N comes from a similar place as the “Stop Lava Ridge” campaign. Along with viewshed anxieties and property value impacts, SWIP-N, like Lava Ridge, would be within single-digit miles of the Minidoka National Historic Site, a former prison camp that held Japanese-Americans during World War II. In the eyes of its staunchest critics, constructing the wind farm would’ve completely damaged any impact of visiting the site by filling the surroundings of what is otherwise a serene, somber scene. Descendants of Minidoka detainees lobbied politicians at all levels to oppose Lava Ridge, a cause that was ultimately championed by Republican politicians in their fight against the project.
These same descendants of Japanese-American detainees have fought the transmission line, arguing that its construction would inevitably lead to new wind projects. “If approved, the SWIP-N line would enable LS Power and other renewable energy companies to build massive wind projects on federal land in and around Jerome County in future years,” wrote Dan Sakura, the son of a Minidoka prisoner, in a September 15 letter to the commission.
Sakura had been a leading voice in the fight against Lava Ridge. When I asked why he was weighing in on SWIP-N, he told me over text message, “The Lava Ridge wind project poisoned the well for renewable energy projects on federal land in Southern Idaho.”
LS Power did not respond to a request for comment.
It’s worth noting that efforts have already been made to avoid SWIP-N’s impacts to the Minidoka National Historic Site. In 2010, Congress required the Interior Secretary to re-do the review process for the transmission line, which at the time was proposed to go through the historic site. The route rejected by Jerome County would go around.
There is also no guarantee that wind energy will flock to southern Idaho any time soon. Yes, there’s a Trump permitting freeze, and federal wind energy tax credits are winding down. That’s almost certainly why the developers of small nuclear reactors have reportedly coveted the Lava Ridge site for future projects. But there’s also incredible hostility pent up against wind partially driven by the now-defunct LS Power project, for instance in Lincoln County, where officials now have an emergency moratorium banning wind energy while they develop a more permanent restrictive ordinance.
Howell made no bones about his own views on wind farms, telling me he prefers battery storage and nuclear power. “As I stand here in my backyard, if they put up windmills, that’s all I’m going to see for 40 miles,” he said
But Howell did confess to me that he thinks SWIP-N will ultimately be built – if the company is able to get these new sign-offs. What kind of energy flows through a transmission line cannot ultimately affect the decision on the special use permit because, he said, “there are rules.” On top of that, Idaho is going to ultimately need more power no matter what, and at the very least, the state will have to get electrons from elsewhere.
Howell’s “non-political” answer to the fate of SWIP-N, as he put it to me, is that “We live on power, so we gotta have more power.”
The week’s most important news around renewable project fights.
1. Western Nevada — The Esmeralda 7 solar mega-project may be no more.
2. Washoe County, Nevada – Elsewhere in Nevada, the Greenlink North transmission line has been delayed by at least another month.
3. Oconto County, Wisconsin – Solar farm town halls are now sometimes getting too scary for developers to show up at.
4. Apache County, Arizona – In brighter news, this county looks like it will give its first-ever conditional use permit for a large solar farm, EDF Renewables’ Juniper Spring project.
5. Putnam County, Indiana – After hearing about what happened here this week, I’m fearful for any solar developer trying to work in Indiana.
6. Tippecanoe County, Indiana – Two counties to the north of Putnam is a test case for the impacts a backlash on solar energy can have on data centers.
A conversation with Spencer Hanes of EnerVenue
Today’s conversation is with Spencer Hanes, vice president of international business development for long-duration battery firm EnerVenue and a veteran in clean energy infrastructure development. I reached out to Hanes for two reasons: One, I wanted to gab about solutions, for once, and also because he expressed an interest in discussing how data center companies are approaching the media-driven battery safety panic sweeping renewable energy development. EnerVenue doesn’t use lithium-ion batteries – it uses metal-hydrogen, which Hanes told me may have a much lower risk of thermal runaway (a.k.a. unstoppable fire).
I really appreciated our conversation because, well, it left me feeling like battery alternatives might become an easy way for folks to dodge the fire freakout permeating headlines and local government hearing rooms.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
From a developer’s perspective, if you’re working in utility-scale battery development, why ditch lithium-ion batteries?
My first battery project was at Duke Energy in 2010. It was a lead-acid battery project in Texas. It was the first time we’d incorporated batteries into a renewables project, and it was probably the biggest in the northern hemisphere. Now I don’t even think it is the biggest in Texas, but it was a big step forward.
What developers are finding is that lithium batteries don’t last as long as the developers would like them to. That means they’ve got a shelf life of 7,000 cycles, maybe 8,000 cycles, and it depends on how you use them – lithium ion batteries have to perform under the perfect environment or they can be damaged. Our batteries, on the other hand, are incredibly flexible, and we have a much more robust product that we think is safer and longer lasting than lithium – which has its place, but there are more and more safety issues around it. [There’s] virtually no risk of thermal runaway with our battery.
So I recently had a lithium-ion battery explode on me for the first time – it sparked up and fused to an electrical cable. It was very surprising, and as someone who writes about this stuff a lot, it still took me aback. As someone who is interacting with folks in data center development spaces, seeking battery storage for their operations, how are they digesting the anxieties around battery failures?
Well, the good news is that the data center developers are just trying to get electrons where they can find them. It's hard to find any sort of generation resource right now. Solar and batteries are just the easiest to find.
The safety piece is always going to be top of mind, though. They’re going to build redundancies into their battery projects, wall them off and containerize different batteries so if there’s a spark it doesn’t propagate.
Because data centers need electrons quickly right now, these companies are immune to the battery safety anxieties percolating in the public right now?
Yeah. They’ve been using them for a long time, they’re familiar with them. But the data centers and the big power users are sometimes stressing the lithium-ion batteries in ways they can no longer handle.
Do you feel like data center companies, big power users, do they get the inherent risks from a social license perspective and a siting perspective in using big lithium-ion batteries?
I think a lot of battery projects are being developed in containers because of fire issues, so if there is an issue it’s contained, and that’s a best practice right now.
What would be better is if there was a zero risk of thermal runaway. I think there’s a growing need for other technologies to come along that are safer and more utility-grade, able to serve multiple purposes. But the data center companies are very smart about how they’re developing, and they’re not going to do it in a way that creates problems for other parts of the data center.
Are there ways to avoid building out a lot of batteries? Maybe minimizing how many batteries are used on site, or how much infrastructure needs to be put on site to minimize fire risk?
I think unfortunately it's largely a case by case determination in where you are. I’m running across more and more engineering firms that aren’t comfortable with even the safest batteries being inside a building. Now, everyone wants them containerized because a thermal runaway event is a catastrophic risk no one wants to take.
EnerVenue has a product that fits that profile. There are many others that fit that profile, as well. We need many more options of technologies that can fit the bill. Lithium has a really important role in our society, doing well enough in phones and laptops, but we think we have a competitive offering for grid scale energy storage.
From your vantage point, do you see data center development as the growth area for storage in the U.S. right now?
A year ago I’d get a call once a quarter, and now I’m fielding calls every month. It's because there’s such a crunch on generation. If you put a battery with a data center … everybody wants to say the centers are operating 99.9% of the time, but they’re also not operating at 100% capacity all day, so if they can generate electricity and store it in a battery to use when rates are cheaper or when there’s a constraint on the grid, that’s a benefit to them.