An Oregon designer of small modular reactors has linked up with a venture to build four small reactors at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington.

NuScale Power of Portland, Ore., on Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding with the Grant County Public Utility District to see if its small modular reactor (SMR) design can be used in the potentially first Washington reactor complex to go online since 1984.

Grant County PUD is part of a joint venture with Energy Northwest of Richland, Wash., and X-energy of Greenbelt, Md., to build four 80-MW modular reactors at Hanford by 2027. (See Small Nukes Proposed for Wash. Hanford Site.)

SMRs are prefabricated facilities with parts manufactured in one location, then transported to the reactor site for final assembly. A modular segment would consist of a mini reactor of 50 to 300 MW. The design allows for extra modules to be added as needed. Southeast Washington’s Tri-Cities area, which includes Richland, hopes to become a prefabrication site for small modular reactors.

Under the venture, Energy Northwest, which operates the 1,150-MW nuclear-power Columbia Generating Station, would provide a partially built reactor site abandoned in the early 1980s and assume operations of the facility. X-energy is also a reactor design firm.

Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) looks on as Energy Northwest CEO Brad Sawatzke, X-energy CEO Clay Sell and Grant PUD CEO Kevin Nordt sign an agreement April 1 to create a partnership to evaluate development of an advanced nuclear reactor in Washington. | Energy Northwest

NuScale’s SMR design has passed a technical review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, making its model the farthest along in the nation in obtaining NRC approval. (See NRC OKs NuScale’s Small Modular Reactor Design.)

Under the new MOU, NuScale and Grant County PUD would work together to perform the PUD’s due diligence in deciding by the end of this year on whether to stick with the venture. The PUD is a potential customer for the reactor complex.

“As interest in our small modular reactors grows, we welcome this opportunity to emphasize how NuScale’s safer and smarter technology can be the reliable and affordable clean energy solution that communities like Grant County and others across America need,” NuScale Power CEO John Hopkins said in a press release.

In the same release, Grant County PUD CEO Kevin Nordt said: “NuScale’s dedication to innovation and safety fit well with Grant PUD’s values. We are excited to work towards making nuclear power a key part of a carbon-free future in the Pacific Northwest.”

NuScale has a project already in place with the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, a coalition of more than 30 utilities in Idaho, Utah and New Mexico. Two of those utilities have dropped out of that effort in the past year because project costs have increased from $3 billion to $6 billion. The project calls for 12 60-MW modules to be built by 2030 at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory.

A second project in the works at Hanford might go online in 2027. It would consist of a 350-MW Natrium reactor, a sodium‐cooled fast reactor potentially built on the site of another partially built reactor site owned by Energy Northwest. This would be a joint venture between Energy Northwest and TerraPower, a Bellevue, Wash., reactor design developer founded by Bill Gates. Energy Northwest said it is in talks with the company about the project, but TerraPower said it has not yet settled on a site and is considering several locations.

Both projects are near Energy Northwest’s Columbia Generating Station, the only commercial reactor operating in the Pacific Northwest.

Energy Northwest was once called the Washington Public Power Supply System. WPPSS tried to build five reactors in the 1960s and 1970s — three at Hanford and two in Satsop, Wash. — but only Reactor No. 2 (now the Columbia Generating Station) was finished. The others were never completed because cost overruns and massive delays led to WPPSS in 1982 suffering the biggest bond default in Wall Street history up to that point.