The growing nuclear industry, particularly work around small modular nuclear reactors, is poised to take off, and there is opportunity for parts of Southwest Virginia to participate in the supply chain and boost job numbers and economic development, according to a new study.
And that is true whether an SMR is ever built in Southwest Virginia or even in Virginia, according to a new study of the SMR supply chain released Tuesday by the LENOWISCO Planning District Commission.
“There are a number of attributes of the LENOWISCO area that make it very, very well prepared to participate in this space,” Jeff Koza-Reinders, one of the primary authors of the study, said Tuesday.
Those attributes include key partnerships with the Virginia Department of Energy, the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, the Virginia Tobacco Regional Revitalization Committee, GO Virginia, community colleges and other institutions of higher education, he added.
Another attribute mentioned in the study is the possibility of an inland port, which has been proposed for the nearby Washington County area. At these facilities, cargo coming to or from coastal ports is transferred between trains and trucks, which can relieve traffic at deep-water ports and reduce the cost of moving cargo.
The analysis also highlights the “extensive nuclear industry cluster” in Virginia, including global nuclear leaders BWX Technologies and Framatome, both in Lynchburg, as well as the U.S. Navy’s nuclear fleet in Hampton Roads.
It also notes that LENOWISCO is close to Nuclear Fuel Services’ operations in Erwin, Tennessee, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Erwin is just over 60 miles from Duffield, where LENOWISCO is headquartered, and Oak Ridge is about 147 miles away.
The study focused on the LENOWISCO Planning District — Lee, Scott and Wise counties and the city of Norton — as well as neighboring Dickenson County.
It is the second study commissioned by LENOWISCO related to SMRs and to how the region could benefit from their development.
Ten months ago, the commission released the results of a feasibility study that determined that Southwest Virginia can be a “competitive hosting ground” for SMRs. The study also identified several possible sites for an SMR, although Duane Miller, the commission’s executive director, emphasized that the sites were just examples of what’s available in the area.
Both studies were conducted by Dominion Engineering Inc. of Reston. The supply chain study was conducted over the last six months and cost about $250,000. It was paid for with grants from the U.S. Economic Development Administration and GO Virginia Region 1.
The local interest in SMRs started when Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced in October 2022 that he planned to put a commercial SMR in Southwest Virginia within 10 years as part of his new energy plan. He said that it would be an economic boon for an area hit hard by the downturn in the coal industry, and that former coal mine land could be used for an SMR site.
SMRs are smaller, simpler versions of traditional nuclear reactors that produce about a third of the power produced by the big reactors. They can be built in a factory and shipped to a site, which saves construction time, reduces the risks and is cheaper. No SMR has been built in the U.S.
[Just what is a small modular nuclear reactor? Find the answer to that and more in our previous coverage.]
The report notes that support for nuclear power is at a high because the U.S. needs a baseload power source that is carbon free, can’t be interrupted and can be built at scale, and nuclear power is the only one that fits the bill. To meet the expected demand, the nation’s nuclear capacity is expected to triple by 2050, the report states.
Miller said he was struck by the report’s revelation that 375,000 additional workers will be needed in the industry. The study also notes that for every direct job, 2.5 to 3.5 indirect and induced jobs would be created.
“So, the one thing I’m really encouraged about and excited about with this study is what it can do in terms of job creation … whether there’s an SMR located in Southwest Virginia in the next decade or not,” he said.
The study notes that the region could participate in the SMR supply chain by hosting corporate headquarters, constructing SMRs and their components.
And as existing nuclear power plants require maintenance and upgrades, the region could provide freshly trained cohorts of workers to travel to these plants during maintenance periods.
In the study, supply chain is defined as the entire system of producing and delivering a product or service, from the very beginning stage of sourcing the raw materials to the final delivery of the product or service to end-users.
Miller uses the analogy of building a car when asked what supply chain means.
“When a car is made at the Ford manufacturing plant, there’s numerous components, whether it’s radio dials, windows, seats that are all made as components elsewhere at other manufacturing facilities and then they are sent for the actual assembly of what is ultimately a car,” he said.
So it would be a matter of figuring out where Southwest Virginia could fit into supplying some of the components by capitalizing on the workforce and manufacturing capabilities here, he said.
The LENOWISCO area has a large pool of skilled workers who have expertise developed in the coal mining industry. Many of those skills would translate to the SMR supply chain, Miller said.
The study also found that existing manufacturing businesses within the region may be able to retool and retrofit their manufacturing processes to participate in the supply chain.
The region also is well-positioned to take advantage of recently enacted state and federal government incentives to develop new supply chain jobs in energy dependent communities, including those involved in coal mining, the study said.
The commission’s next step should be to start advertising the capabilities of the region and its attributes, Koza-Reinders said. The region is “primed and ready,” he added.
