Why Should Delaware Care?
As public concern mounts over the cost of energy bills, and data center proposals raise worries about grid reliability, state lawmakers are exploring alternative options for electricity. The Trump administration’s halting of offshore wind projects has also placed constraints on Delaware’s energy emissions reduction plans.
In the coming months, a task force of Delaware lawmakers and stakeholders — many of whom have no experience with nuclear power — will explore whether small modular reactors might help meet the state’s escalating energy demands.
“I don’t have any particular expertise in nuclear energy, but I am a problem-solver,” said task force member and state Rep. Jeff Hilovsky, an optometrist by training. “We have an energy problem in Delaware and we can’t deny that.”
The exploration of the emerging trend of smaller-scale nuclear power comes at a time when power costs are rising significantly, and the projects could be an intersection between competing political views: Republicans have attacked renewable projects that are large or land-intensive, while Democrats seek a low-carbon footprint.
Why Delaware has seen such a drastic spike in energy prices, and therefore consumer billing, is a complicated question. But leaders who testified before the state legislature and Public Service Commission this spring pointed to a regional energy network that has seen booming demand for electricity while at the same time generators have closed and their replacements have been delayed.
It comes down to a supply-and-demand equation, where demand is rapidly growing with extreme weather patterns, electric vehicles, and internet data centers.
Meanwhile, supply has stagnated, in part because of regulatory delays in approving new projects.
That issue will grow even more dire now that the Trump administration has moved to kill major offshore wind projects, like the U.S. Wind project under development off the coast of Delaware for years, and to disincentivize solar arrays by stripping away lucrative tax credits.
About half of all projects in the regional energy market’s future plans to add power to the grid would come from solar though, while a quarter would come from battery projects to store solar energy and 10% would come from wind farms. Less than 20% of planned projects would involve carbon-based energy, like natural gas and coal.
The PJM network, a 13-state energy grid that includes Delaware, has no new-build nuclear projects currently in its plans. It is planning to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania by 2027, and upgrade four existing nuclear power plants around the region.
What are SMRs?
While many Delawareans may be well acquainted with the decades-old Salem, N.J., Nuclear Power Plant that looms over much of New Castle County’s Delaware River shore, small modular reactors, or SMRs, would be a bit different.
Perhaps most notably missing are the large cooling towers, as SMRs’ compact designs use a more modern cooling system that would blend in with buildings. The SMRs have two designs, using either pressurized water or helium gas to cool the nuclear fission created by splitting atoms of uranium.
They are designed to be built in factories and shipped to sites for installation, allowing for lower upfront cost, faster construction, and incremental capacity upgrades. SMRs would typically generate up to 300 megawatts of electricity — or about a third the size of traditional reactors.
SMRs emerged from decades of use in submarines and icebreakers, dating back to the 1950s. The advancement of nuclear power was chilled by the 1979 Three Mile Island accident and 1986 Chernobyl meltdown though.
By the late 1990s, however, interest was renewed in nuclear power to develop safer and more efficient designs that have led to SMRs. The International Atomic Energy Agency began promoting SMR concepts, and companies worldwide have developed prototypes.
Yet today, only three SMRs are in operation anywhere in the world – the first opened in Russia in 2020 while two more have followed in China.
There are a number of SMR projects in the works in the U.S., but none have broken ground yet and developers anticipate construction to take up to a decade. One notable project in Utah has already been scuttled after years of work because of rising inflationary cost pressures.
‘We don’t have a lot of options’
Since Delaware imports most of its power, lawmakers have pitched considering a newer technology.
“We don’t have a lot of options when it comes to new baseload energy generation,” State Sen. Stephanie Hansen, chair of the recently created Delaware Nuclear Energy Feasibility Task Force, said ahead of the group’s first meeting Oct. 27. “We don’t have the luxury of ruling any one out without giving it a thorough review.”
The task force was created by bipartisan legislation and aims to take a deep dive into whether the technology is right for Delaware. It’s tasked with exploring safety, cost, power-producing capabilities, and more with 25 members, including lawmakers, regulators, business people, and academics.
In Delaware, about 60% of the power consumed is imported, said Kathryn Lienhard, an energy research associate with Delaware Sea Grant, who was one of the first expert presenters to the group. The First State is hardly first when it comes to electricity – it ranks 47th out of 50 states in terms of generating power.
Traditional nuclear energy accounted for about 18.2% of the electricity generated in the U.S. last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. None of that existing capacity is found in small modular reactors, though.
Is Delaware a likely site?
State Sen. Bryant Richardson (R-Seaford), who sponsored the resolution that created the task force, and Hansen said ahead of the group’s first meeting on Monday that they are unaware of any specific companies actually eyeing Delaware as a potential place to build small nuclear reactors.
Still, Richardson pointed to the Indian River Power Plant as what he believes would be an ideal site for an SMR. Martin Willis, a union boilermaker and task force member, on Monday suggested deploying a small reactor at the Dover Air Force Base – a location that could draw less scrutiny because it is federal property, but also still feeds into the state’s energy grid.
“The feasibility of Delaware acquiring nuclear power right now is zero,” Willis said during the meeting, pointing to regulatory hurdles.
Even if a company was looking at Delaware and all the regulatory and financial pieces were in place, it would still be years before those plants would produce power, and potentially decades before companies would see any costs recovered from constructing what is one of the most expensive types of power generation technologies.
The discussion comes as a so-called nuclear power “renaissance” has been making a hum nationwide, particularly as the Trump administration plows ahead in an effort to “modernize nuclear regulation” and ultimately quadruple America’s nuclear capacity by 2050. The previous administration, too, touted the promise of nuclear and small-scale reactors as needed in the race to reduce energy emissions while also meeting growing demands for power.
Richardson said the bill creating the group was inspired by information about emerging nuclear technology shared by David Stevenson of the Caesar Rodney Institute, a conservative think tank focused on Delaware issues. Stevenson, an outspoken critic of renewable energy, particularly offshore wind, was not appointed to the 25-member task force.
Stevenson was, however, in attendance during the group’s first meeting in Dover and was one of the few people to offer public comment during the sparsely attended meeting. He served up a list of suggested experts for the group to consider as well as unverified claims that new federal legislation related to new nuclear technologies is on the horizon and that several states are “open” to storing the toxic waste these power plants create.
“One of the most pressing problems is the management of radioactive waste,” wrote John Flaherty of the Delaware Coalition for Open Government in testimony to the group.
During Monday’s meeting, one of the few experts with extensive nuclear power plant operational experience, PSEG’s Vice President of Nuclear Engineering Robert DeNight, said that waste is typically stored onsite.
Legislation creating the task force calls for a summary to be produced by the end of the year, although Hansen has already called for that due date to be delayed. The next meeting is scheduled for 9 a.m. to noon on Monday, Dec. 1.