The new design, called AP300 for its capacity to generate 300 megawatts of electricity, is a scaled-down version of its AP1000 reactor, which has endured two decades of regulatory licensing, testing, supply chain and workforce development, construction and operation.
Last month, the very first AP1000 built in the U.S. put electrons onto the grid at Georgia's Plant Vogtle. Four AP1000 plants are operating in China.
The AP300 is the Cranberry firm's latest effort to develop a product that has more of the desirable parts of nuclear energy — carbon-free electricity, reliability and security — and fewer of the undesirables — multibillion dollar construction cost, huge footprint, long lead time.
For example, the company is ambitiously projecting a much faster deployment schedule than has been previously achieved for a new reactor design. Westinghouse expects the AP300 to be licensed by U.S. nuclear regulators by 2027, and built and producing power by 2033.
The development began about two years ago, said Rita Baranwal, Westinghouse's senior vice president of the AP300 program.
"There was a substantial level of interest in this size class for a few different reasons," she said. At the time, "the conversation around energy security was not as prevalent. But the conversation around decarbonization was in full swing."
Both considerations have only intensified since then.
At a smaller scale, nuclear power becomes an option not just for large regulated utilities but also for industrial customers, municipalities and university campuses. It can be used to produce electricity, district heating, and make hydrogen, Ms. Baranwal said.
Already, Westinghouse has been working on using the high temperature steam produced at operating plants for electrolysis — the process of splitting water atoms into hydrogen and oxygen.
"That technology can absolutely be applied" to the AP300, she said.
The cost of an AP300 is expected to be $1 billion per unit, once enough units have been built to achieve a stable cost, which "depends on the number of customers we have and the number of units we would sell," Ms. Baranwal said.
Nuclear construction notoriously stretches beyond budgets and schedules. The two AP1000 reactors built at Plant Vogtle are expected to top $30 billion, more than double their initial budget. Two other AP1000 plants were dropped mid-construction in South Carolina because of cost overruns.
Even at its optimal price, the AP300 nuclear plant would cost at least twice as much as a new natural gas power plant with the same capacity.
Still, the appetite is there for small modular reactors, as evidenced by a wave of announcements and licensing applications from other nuclear developers.
The market dynamics have changed in the past decade, said Matthew Memmott, an associate professor of chemical engineering at Brigham Young University and a former Westinghouse engineer.
"We have the distributed power, and the rise of data centers and bitcoin mining operations, and remote industry sources that will need the heat and the power," he said.
Goldilocks reactor
Mr. Memmott was a lead designer of Westinghouse's last small modular reactor project. The Westinghouse SMR, as it was called, was designed with a capacity of 225 megawatts and had all of its steam components in one vessel. It was shelved in 2014 after twice being passed over by the U.S. Department of Energy's SMR commercialization program, which signed cost-sharing agreements with two other developers.
At the time, then-Westinghouse CEO Danny Roderick said there were no customers for small modular reactors and that "unless you're going to build 30 to 50 of them, you're not going to make your money back."
"The worst thing to do is get ahead of the market," he said.
Even before that, Westinghouse had developed the AP600, but never sold any units and instead incorporated its design into the AP1000.
Meanwhile, the company has been at work on a microreactor, the eVinci, which has a capacity of 5 megawatts of electricity, can be dropped in a remote location and operate autonomously, then removed when its fuel is spent.
For the AP300, Westinghouse is banking on the name recognition, the lessons learned and the road already paved with licensing the AP1000.
On its website, the company stressed that "global regulators have reviewed these systems and determined that they meet advanced safety criteria."
The AP1000, a pressurized light-water reactor, is licensed in the U.S., the U.K. and China.
"Not that we expect it to be fast-tracked," Ms. Baranwal said, "but we don't anticipate those first of a kind type of questions."
Westinghouse has been teasing the announcement of the AP300 in recent days, using the hashtag #Maythe4th and filling in the first A in a mock- Wordle. "Have you solved it yet," Ms. Baranwal tweeted. "We have."
The nuclear firm is in the process of being sold to a consortium of Brookfield Renewable Partners and Canadian nuclear fuel company Cameco Corp. The $8 billion deal was announced in October and is expected to close in the second half of this year, provided it secures regulatory approvals and other closing conditions.
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