Climate bill encourages coal community’s shift to nuclear
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A major economic bill headed to the president has “game-changing” incentives for the nuclear energy industry, experts say, and those tax credits are even more substantial if a facility is sited in a community where a coal plant is closing.
The transformative bill provides the most spending to fight climate change by any one nation ever in a single push. Among the many things it could do, nuclear energy experts say, is spur more projects like one Bill Gates is planning in Kemmerer, Wyo. Gates’ company, TerraPower, plans to build an advanced, nontraditional nuclear reactor and employ workers from a local coal-fired power plant scheduled to close soon.
Companies designing and building the next generation of nuclear reactors could pick one of two new tax credits available to carbon-free electricity generators, such as wind and solar. To ensure coal communities have a place in the energy transition, both tax credits include a 10 percentage point bonus for facilities sited where residents have relied on fossil fuel plants or mining— a “sizeable incentive” to locate them there, according to Matt Crozat, senior director for strategy and policy development at the Nuclear Energy Institute.
That could include towns in coal-dependent West Virginia, since the state eliminated a ban on nuclear power plants this year. Or in Maryland, where the state announced a partnership in June to look at repurposing a fossil fuel site for a small nuclear reactor. Or in Montana, where lawmakers are looking at advanced nuclear reactors as a possible replacement for coal boilers.
Staffan Qvist, an expert in energy systems analysis and decarbonization strategies, has extensively researched the feasibility of replacing coal plants with emissions-free alternatives in China and Poland. He found that coal plants often make ideal sites for advanced, high-temperature nuclear reactors.
“It’s a growing trend,” Qvist said, “now it’s being talked about everywhere.” Qvist is also founder of Qvist Consulting Limited in the United Kingdom. “You have a site, you have a grid connection. You have equipment that can remain in use, and you have a workforce that could be retrained.”
A design by NuScale Power is the first to be fully certified in the U.S. and the company is planning to begin operating a small modular reactor in 2029 at the Idaho National Laboratory. The company’s chief financial officer, Chris Colbert, said former coal plants are ideal locations for advanced nuclear technology, in part because transmission lines are already in place.
Colbert also said he thinks potential customers will be more interested in the company’s small advanced reactors because of the incentives in the bill.
There are nearly $375 billion in climate incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. Among them, there’s a new tax credit available to any carbon-free electricity generator. That includes new advanced nuclear reactors that begin construction in 2025 or later. Existing nuclear plants that expand their output could get credit for that additional electricity production. The credit is worth at least $25 per megawatt-hour for the first decade the plant operates, according to NEI, the industry’s trade association.
Or owners of a new carbon-free electricity generator could take advantage of an investment tax credit, worth 30 percent of the amount they paid to build the facility.
The bill also has $700 million to produce the uranium fuel in the U.S. that many advanced reactors need.
The incentives are a game changer for the nuclear energy industry, said Jacopo Buongiorno, professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“This is really substantial,” he said as he read the list of tax credits. “This should move the needle in terms of making these technologies economically viable right off the bat.”