With hotter summers, more people and more data centers sucking up power in our state, it’s clear that Arizona needs more sources of power.
And now, Arizona utilities and regulators are in the very early phases of figuring out one way to fill that gap: nuclear power.
Arizona is already home to the second-largest nuclear power plant in the country: Palo Verde. But now, with more coal plants being decommissioned and demand going up, we could soon be home to one more.
Arizona Capitol Times reporter Reagan Priest reported on a recent Arizona Corporation Commission workshop exploring a new plant and she joined The Show to talk more about it — beginning with just how excited commissioners seem about the idea.
Full conversation
REAGAN PRIEST: Very gung-ho. This was the third workshop they’ve had on nuclear energy, and this one focused a lot on kind of the practical applications, the things you need to get done to actually bring a nuclear plant to the state. So lots of what would water resources look like, what does the supply chain look like, what does the workforce look like, those sorts of things.
LAUREN GILGER: And all of those things are pretty big, I’m sure, right? Building another—we should say we already have a very large nuclear power plant in the state in Palo Verde. This would be a second one, and it’s a massive undertaking, right? What, just surface-wise, would this entail?
REAGAN PRIEST: Well, the costs would be in the billions, billions. It also would require significant infrastructure, and the supply chains are maybe not necessarily ready for those big infrastructure pieces that need to come in to build not just a reactor but all of the infrastructure that supports it, like cooling tanks, transmission lines to get you the power from the plant, things like that.
LAUREN GILGER: I’ve been out to Palo Verde years ago and did the kind of tour there. It’s massive and wild. What about locations? Like where you put a nuclear power plant is a big part of the debate whenever there is talk of a new nuclear power plant anywhere. Who wants this?
REAGAN PRIEST: Yeah, actually there are a couple of communities that are interested, specifically Navajo County. Navajo County had Cholla Power Plant, and they also had the Navajo Generating Station, and those were both coal-fired plants that were decommissioned. And Cholla will now be a natural gas plant; at least two units over there will be a natural gas plant.
But the utilities are looking at using those old coal-fired plant sites as a nuclear site because the closure of those plants did economically harm those communities. And so those communities are interested in bringing a new power plant in that can help spur job creation and growth for those communities.
So I know the Navajo County supervisors sent down Supervisor Jason Whiting, and he, at this most recent workshop, was telling the commissioners that that county really wants this. They would be thrilled to have a nuclear power plant up there.
LAUREN GILGER: Right. So, let’s just back up for a moment, Reagan, and talk about why the corporation commissioners would like a new nuclear power plant in the state. We are a growing place, and energy demand — in particular in the summer here as it’s very, very hot — is going way up. Is this just we need more places to bring us more power?
REAGAN PRIEST: Yeah, Arizona definitely needs more power for a couple of reasons, you know. It’s hotter every summer, data centers really are looking at the desert, and so you need a lot of power to power those large load customers. And then I think it’s also driven by the fact that we are seeing the coal-fired plants being decommissioned.
There’s a couple that, like Springerville and Coronado, are being transitioned into natural gas plants. But we still need that baseload power, and a lot of commissioners and other stakeholders see nuclear as a cleaner way to get that baseload power that you don’t see when you decommission coal plants.
LAUREN GILGER: So how does a new nuclear plant kind of fit into that picture? Like, where do we get most of our energy right now?
REAGAN PRIEST: Most of the state’s energy comes from a mix, and the biggest source is generally natural gas. It used to be coal, but coal is coming out of favor. So right now it’s natural gas. And natural gas is not the cleanest source of energy, but it provides that stable source of power.
And nuclear could also provide a stable source of power without some of the carbon emissions that you see from natural gas. Is nuclear entirely environmentally friendly? Certainly not. But nuclear does have less emissions, and so it could provide — it could be part of that energy mix.
And I think a lot of people view nuclear as the clean energy of the future where maybe one day we get to a point where we transition completely away from natural gas with a focus on nuclear and renewable energy sources like solar and wind.
LAUREN GILGER: So Reagan, this comes as Arizona, though, is facing serious challenges in terms of our water future. Like, we’re watching these Colorado River negotiations. It looks like we are facing pretty major cuts in Arizona to our Colorado River water supply. They need a lot of water at a nuclear power plant. Is that going to be a problem?
REAGAN PRIEST: It’s certainly going to be a problem. Commissioners heard from multiple different water stakeholders at the workshop in June who said, “The state doesn’t have a lot of water to go around. The state cannot play with its water resources right now.” And any nuclear technology will need cooling technology, whether that’s water or air.
There are other ways to cool a nuclear power plant, but right now, most plants rely on water. Palo Verde relies on reclaimed water from five different cities in the Valley. So Palo Verde’s not taking away drinking water from people, but even that reclaimed water, there’s still not enough of that to go around.
LAUREN GILGER: There were some legislative efforts at the Capitol last session, Reagan, to kind of streamline environmental laws, environmental review processes, which are, I’m sure, onerous in terms of building a new nuclear power plant. But they were less than successful, we should say?
REAGAN PRIEST: Yeah. So there were, I think, we were tracking at least six bills related to a new kind of nuclear technology called small modular reactors. And lawmakers are really interested in speeding up zoning procedures and, yeah, getting around those environmental procedures to get them to the state quicker.
The governor vetoed one bill which would have allowed utility companies to basically bypass some of the commission’s environmental review processes in order to bring a nuclear power plant to a decommissioned coal plant.
And so that would have helped in the project that we’re theorizing about right now. But the governor’s office basically said “We’re putting the cart before the horse here.” And they’re supportive of nuclear energy technologies, but they don’t think going around the environmental review process is the right way to signal what Arizona wants from nuclear power.
LAUREN GILGER: Interesting. And, yeah, this is a bipartisan effort for the most part. Everybody seems to agree we need more nuclear power?
REAGAN PRIEST: Oh, absolutely. It’s bipartisan, it’s across governments. I mean, we’ve seen the offices of Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego have told the commission that they’re gung-ho on this. The governor’s office also very gung-ho, and Republican lawmakers are super excited about it. It’s a level of collaboration and interest that you don’t necessarily see in most issues.
LAUREN GILGER: Pretty rare, yeah. What about environmentalists, the environmental lobby here? Are they upset about this, or are they OK with it?
REAGAN PRIEST: They are not thrilled, specifically because of the water usage and also because nuclear waste is still an issue that we don’t have a lot of solutions to. We don’t have a great way of dealing with nuclear waste that is guaranteed to not impact the environment.
LAUREN GILGER: Timeline here, Reagan?
REAGAN PRIEST: So the utilities are currently undergoing site selection. Very early stages of that, they’re just examining sites. They expect to have stakeholder meetings in communities where these potential sites could be at the end of this year. And then after that, they’re going to kind of take a step back and examine all sorts of different factors — financial, technical, environmental — and decide from there whether this is a good step forward for Arizona.
So I wouldn’t say it’s a guarantee that we’re getting any new nuclear anytime soon, but the process is underway, and we could see some movement at the end of this year.
LAUREN GILGER: All right, that’s Reagan Priest, Executive Branch Reporter for the Arizona Capitol Times, joining us. Reagan, thanks so much for coming in, appreciate it.
REAGAN PRIEST: Thank you for having me.
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