US nuclear operators plan reactor upgrades to produce more power

In short: U.S. nuclear plant operators are planning equipment upgrades to get more electricity from reactors that already exist.

What's going on

Building new nuclear plants can take a long time, so some companies are looking for faster gains from the plants they already run. These projects are often called a power uprate, which means upgrading parts of a plant so it can safely run at a higher output (like tuning up an engine so it can deliver more power).

Constellation Energy said it plans to invest more than $4.3 billion to increase output at 11 reactors across six plants in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. The company says the upgrades could add a total of 890 megawatts by the end of 2032. Google said it would buy the added power, which is intended for the PJM grid, a large regional electricity network.

Vistra has been offered up to $4.2 billion in conditional federal financing for upgrades at Beaver Valley in Pennsylvania and Davis-Besse and Perry in Ohio. Vistra says the work could add 433 megawatts and support operating the plants for 20 years beyond their current licenses. “Conditional” means the financing is not final, and the extra electricity is not online yet.

Constellation also has a planned 190-megawatt uprate at its Calvert Cliffs plant in Maryland, backed in part by a long-term power deal with Amazon. Separately, the Department of Energy’s UPRISE initiative has targets to add 2.5 gigawatts by 2027 and 5 gigawatts by 2029 through uprates, efficiency improvements, and restarting plants.

What to watch

All of these are plans until the work is finished and approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the federal agency that checks nuclear safety and licensing changes). The NRC says past approved uprates have added about 6 gigawatts to the U.S. grid, but it also said there were no uprate applications under review at the time of the available status information.

Source: NYTimes