Welcome to your Friday Rundown for the week ending May 4. Feedback is always welcome at info@clearpathaction.org.
MILESTONE IN LANDMARK ADVANCED NUCLEAR REVIEW
NuScale Power became the first company to complete the first round of a Nuclear Regulatory Commission advanced reactor design certification review. NRC is on schedule to certify NuScale’s small modular reactor design in 2020. NuScale’s first customer, Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, is planning to start operating a 12-module SMR plant in Idaho by the mid-2020s.
The news came after the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy last week awarded NuScale $40 million in cost-sharing financial assistance.
DOE ANNOUNCES $30M FOR ENERGY STORAGE TECH
The Department of Energy announced $30 million for building new technologies that allow energy storage on the power grid for much longer – from 10 to roughly 100 hours. The funding comes under a new ARPA-E program called DAYS (Duration Addition to electricitY Storage). DAYS teams will ideally develop energy storage systems that could be deployed nearly anywhere and discharge power at a per-cycle cost target that is much lower than what is possible in systems available today. The $30 million is open to a range of storage technologies, including thermal, mechanical, electrochemical and chemical. MORE DETAILS
At a National Hydropower Association Waterpower Week event, Undersecretary of Energy Mark Menezes announced $23 million to spur development of clean marine energy. The funding would come under the department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy to research and evaluate next-generation wave and tidal/current systems and other technologies. MORE DETAILS
According to a new DOE report, hydropower provides roughly 7% of U.S. electricity supply and has grown nearly 2 gigawatts over the past decade throughout the country. The current development pipeline covers 214 projects totaling 1,712 megawatts of additional potential capacity, dominated by projects at existing water resource infrastructure. MORE DETAILS
