The Story Behind America's First Potential Small Modular Reactor

*Editor's note: Story first published by Idaho National Laboratory

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To understand Idaho National Laboratory’s long-term involvement in small modular reactor (SMR) research, including NuScale Power and the Carbon Free Power Project, one needs to go back to the late 1990s.

For most of that decade, the U.S. government had not offered much support for nuclear energy research and development. In Idaho, in 1994 the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) project was cancelled and the Transient Reactor Test Facility was put on operational standby.

Nevertheless, when President Bill Clinton ordered his Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology in 1997 to review the national energy portfolio, Jim Lake saw an opening. Lake, the Advanced Nuclear Energy research and development director at Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, joined with colleagues from other national labs and the American Nuclear Society to testify before the committee.

“It was a scary time, actually,” said Lake, now retired and living in Sun Valley, Idaho. “Except for a few fellowships, the budget for nuclear research had been reduced to zero.”

The committee listened, however, and Lake said he felt like nuclear got a fair hearing. In November 1997, one of the committee’s recommendations was for work on new reactor designs that could compete in the global market on the basis of higher efficiency, lower cost and improved safety. Another was for lower-output reactors for use in settings where large reactors are not attractive.

“When all was said and done, their report was pretty positive,” Lake said. With help from William Magwood IV, the Department of Energy’s director for nuclear energy under presidents Clinton and later George W. Bush, nuclear R&D money started reappearing in the DOE budget. In 1999, INEEL and Argonne were named as lead laboratories for nuclear reactor technology in the U.S. Department of Energy’s national laboratory complex.

It was DOE funds through the newly formed Nuclear Energy Research Initiative in 2000 that enabled a team from INEEL, Oregon State University (OSU) and Nexant (an energy and technology consulting subsidiary of Bechtel) to work on a three-year project called the Multi-Application Small Light Water Reactor (MASLWR). This was the seed from which NuScale’s Small Modular Reactor eventually sprang.

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