NuScale has downplayed the impacts of The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s recent rejection of an amended interconnection service agreement.
The amended ISA would have facilitated an expanded colocated load at an Amazon Web Services data center connected to the Susquehanna nuclear power station, enabling it to serve the data center behind the meter.
In its Q3 earnings call, NuScale's CEO John Hopkins said it’s too early to tell how the ruling will impact future colocation opportunities.
Unlike its competitors, Kairos and X-energy, NuScale has yet to announce a major supply agreement with a data center provider.
“Negotiating agreements is a complex process that takes time … but we remain confident that we can achieve our near-term sales goals,” Hopkins said.
During the call, the company reported progress on several fronts. First, it expects that its application before the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to uprate its reactor design from 50MW to 77MW will conclude by mid-2025.
NuScale also confirmed that it has signed a contract with Fluor Corporation to commence the next phase of engineering study for the planned 462MW Doicești power plant in Romania, which would be the first commercial SMR in Europe. A final investment decision on the project is expected in “about a year from now,” Hopkins said.
Additionally, NuScale announced that it has signed up to the Texas Nuclear Alliance as a founding member. The company joins Paragon Energy, Dow, Reploy, Lockton, Eradeh Power, Aalo, TerraPower, Constellation, and Oklo, among others in the group.
The SMR sector has ridden a wave of growth in 2024, and the data center market has led the charge.
Last month, AWS signed an agreement with Energy Northwest, a consortium of state public utilities, to enable the development of four advanced SMRs.
Before this, Google signed a corporate agreement to purchase nuclear energy from multiple SMRs from Karios Power, with an expected deployment date in 2030.
Colocation giant Equinix has agreed to purchase 500MW in PPAs from fast-fission reactor company Oklo, while Prometheus Hyperscale has also agreed to purchase 100MW from the Sam Altman-backed business.
SMR developers are increasingly focusing on the data center sector, seeing it as a first mover and ideally suited to the industry's energy profile. In October, Deep Atomic launched a new 60MW SMR for the data center market, aiming to capitalize on this growth opportunity.
