By KIRSTEN LASKEY
Los Alamos Daily Post
kirsten@ladailypost.com
After years of effort to bring the Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP) into fruition, the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) and NuScale Power Corporation announced last week that the project’s plug was pulled.
Los Alamos County joined the CFPP back in 2018.
“Despite significant efforts by both parties to advance the CFPP, it appears unlikely that the project will have enough subscriptions to continue toward deployment,” Los Alamos County stated in a press release.
In January, it was reported that 28 of the 46 UAMPS members had subscribed to the project.
“I think the reason we couldn’t get subscribers is two-fold,” Department of Public Utilities Manager Philo Shelton said. “Some subscribers were concerned about the first-of-its-kind technology – there is a risk. Plus, there are limitations on electric transmission … that has been the challenge of any new electric production project.”
Los Alamos County subscribed to 8.6 megawatts of the project’s entire 462 megawatts.
With the project ended, Shelton said the CFPP participants will be reimbursed 100 percent for the development cost share agreement portion, which is $49.8 million through Oct. 31, and provided $5 million in credit support for remaining winddown costs. It was reported in January 2023 that if CFPP subscription goals were not met, the County would have an exit payment of $251,068, which covered financing and owners’ engineering costs to the project.
The CFPP may be done but the County has not abandoned its efforts to utilize carbon-free energy sources in order to achieve its goal to become a net carbon-neutral electric provider by 2040.
“This is one piece of our portfolio … we are working on a project that (was) presented to the Board of Public Utilities on Wednesday, Nov. 15, to do a solar-plus-battery project in San Juan County, New Mexico. This project is expected to be online in 2026,” Shelton said.
Plus, he said the County is pursuing a geothermal plant with UAMPS. Two sites in Nevada are being considered for the plant. Another option is collaborating with San Ildefonso Pueblo on a project that would produce 50 megawatts of solar energy. Both of these projects are still in the study phases, Shelton said.
The CFPP was proposed to be a nuclear electric generation facility to be constructed at an Idaho National Laboratory site. The facility would have utilized small modular reactor technology developed by NuScale Power, according to the County’s website. The plant was projected to be operational by 2030 and would have produced up to 77 megawatts of power from each of the plant’s six modules.