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Written by Valery Borkovich
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Biden administration will bring more decommissioned nuclear power plants online to meet surging demand for emissions-free electricity, White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi said on Monday. He said he is working on a plan to do so.
Two such projects are already underway, including Holtec’s plan to restart the Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan and Constellation Energy’s ThreeMile plant in Pennsylvania, near the site of the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history. This also includes the possibility of restarting the unit at the Shima Plant.
Asked if more closed factories could be reopened, Zaidi said: “We are working in a very specific way. There are two possibilities.”
He did not identify the power plants or provide details about the efforts.
Speaking at the Reuters Impact conference in New York, Zaidi said restarting existing dormant nuclear power plants will bring more nuclear power online to fight climate change and expand production.・He stated that this is part of the three-pronged strategy of President Biden’s administration.
Two other areas include the development of small modular reactors (SMRs) for specific applications and the continued development of the next generation of advanced reactors.
Biden has called for a tripling of U.S. nuclear power generation capacity to meet accelerating energy demand driven in part by the expansion of power-hungry technologies such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing. .
The Biden administration announced last week that it had closed on a $1.52 billion loan to restart Michigan’s Palisades nuclear power plant, which will take two years.
Meanwhile, Constellation and Microsoft signed a power agreement last month to help rebuild a section of its Pennsylvania factory, and Constellation is hoping to get government support as well.
Zaidi told the conference that the US Navy requested information on Monday to build SMRs at six bases. “SMR is a technology that isn’t decades away. It’s a technology that American companies are looking to implement in the next 10 years,” he said.
Zaidi also noted the woes plaguing another of Biden’s clean energy goals, to bring 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power online by the end of the decade.
The government this year cut offshore wind leases in both Oregon and the Gulf of Mexico, citing low demand from companies as high costs, equipment issues and supply chain problems impact other projects. Sales were shelved.
Zaidi said at least half of the 30GW goal is already under construction and some of the early hurdles will provide useful learnings for future projects.
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He said he is “quite optimistic about the next wave of projects as domestic supply chains become established and we hope that capital costs will improve compared to what projects are currently facing.”
(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
