AIKEN, S.C. – The Department of Energy wants to see eight large-scale nuclear reactors operating in South Carolina by 2036, and an advanced small modular reactor at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in the foreseeable future, Tim Walsh, DOE’s Assistant Secretary of Environmental Management, said here Thursday.
Nationwide, Walsh wants to see 10 big new reactors under construction by 2030. Speaking at the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative on the University of South Carolina Aiken campus adjacent to SRS, Walsh emphasized the White House goal of increasing America’s nuclear power generation from 100 gigawatts to 400 gigawatts.
Walsh was the featured speaker Thursday at the “Nuclear Renaissance in the Southeast” event at the center developed by USC-Aiken and the Savannah River National Laboratory. He said the Palmetto State is primed to be a major location for the department’s American Energy Hubs initiative, which aims to tap available land on Cold War era sites as energy hubs.
Walsh touted the current plan to bring two reactors online at the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Power Station located in Jenkinsville, about 80 miles from SRS. That work will be done through a collaboration with Google and Brookfield Asset Management. After VC Summer, Duke Energy’s WS Lee Site in Cherokee County will be tapped for reactors.
“And then, down the road, hopefully we’ll see some reactors going in at Savannah River,” Walsh said. “What that really means for South Carolina is a strong workforce of union laborers will be able to build those. So, I would like to say over the next 10 years, we have eight new reactors built right here in South Carolina.”
Walsh said the timeline is aggressive and that his office and the current administration has a sense of urgency. That is why they’re working with Duke on securing funds via DOE’s Energy Dominance Finance Program. “That is being finalized in the last quarter of this year,” he said. “At Savannah River Site, we’re a little further out in how that will come together. But it’s an ideal site to build (reactors).”
In addition to large scale reactors, Walsh also discussed DOE’s initiative to recycle weapons-grade plutonium and cancel the previous plan to dilute and dispose of it. He mentioned conversations with Newcleo and Oklo, two companies he expects to have a presence at SRS. Specifically, the companies would assist in bringing a 200-MW small modular reactor online at the site, and fuel it using the mixed oxide plutonium product.
The companies’ work would be similar in some respects to the original multi-billion-dollar MOX project, which was terminated in 2018 due to cost overruns and schedule delays. But Walsh said the work this time around would be different.
“There’s a lot of collaboration that happens between DOE and these companies,” Walsh said. “We do all the criticality safety reviews and licensing. We are following the procedures, and we’re using a lot of technology DOE developed, but commercializing it with these companies.”
Walsh has said DOE is renaming the Office of Environmental Management as the Office of Nuclear Restoration and Revitalization.
