The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) will collaborate with ENTRA1 Energy—NuScale’s exclusive global strategic partner—to develop a 6-GW portfolio, including six ENTRA1 Energy power plants on TVA sites, the companies announced on Sept. 2.
Under the agreement, ENTRA1 Energy will develop and own the nuclear assets across TVA’s seven-state service region, selling electricity to the nation’s largest public power supplier through future power purchase agreements. “This collaboration could provide enough energy to power the equivalent of approximately 4.5 million homes or 60 new data centers—at a time when hyperscale data centers, artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductor manufacturing, and other energy-intensive technologies are driving unprecedented growth in electricity demand,” the companies said in a joint statement on Tuesday.
The collaboration marks the latest bold initiatives spearheaded by TVA, the nation’s largest public power supplier, which is making significant investments in expanding and modernizing its power system, advancing new generation and transmission infrastructure to support the region’s growing energy needs, including efforts to diversify resources and ensure reliability amid surging demand from large load sectors like digital infrastructure and advanced manufacturing.
The companies on Tuesday said the collaborative agreement heralds the “biggest deployment program in U.S. history.” A collaborative agreement in the power sector, however, is a business arrangement where two companies work together to develop energy projects by sharing resources, expertise, and responsibilities. It likely means that TVA and ENTRA1 Energy will now jointly identify sites, coordinate development activities, and share planning efforts for the nuclear projects as ENTRA1 handles the financing and construction obligations.
Houston-based ENTRA1, founded in 2019, serves as NuScale’s exclusive global strategic partner for the commercialization and development of power plants utilizing NuScale Power Modules (NPMs). “ENTRA1 holds the exclusive rights for the worldwide commercialization, distribution, sales, and development of our products, services, and power plants,” NuScale explains in its latest filing, noting that its commercialization strategy relies “heavily” on the partnership pursuant to the amended and restated Strategic Alliance Agreement, which became effective on May 7, 2025. The agreement, notably, also includes non-circumvention provisions that restrict NuScale from pursuing certain opportunities independently.
“The ENTRA1 team brings deep experience in investing in, developing, and executing power infrastructure. Our focus is on deploying best-in-class American technologies in the nuclear SMR and natural gas-fired power sectors—and that is what we are doing in the immediate term via our partnership with NuScale SMRs,” said Skip Alvarado, ENTRA1 Energy chief projects officer, on Tuesday. “We’re investing in the next generation of power solutions to meet the country’s growing energy demands.”
A major step in the TVA–ENTRA1 Energy effort will be to secure relevant U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approvals. While NuScale remains the first and only SMR technology with a certified design (its 50-MWe US600 model approved in 2022), the NRC in May 2025 also granted a Standard Design Approval for NuScale’s uprated 77-MWe US460 module, which can be configured in six-packs for 462 MWe per plant. However, that approval does not eliminate the need for site-specific licensing, construction, and operating permits. TVA, which already holds an early site permit at its Clinch River site in Tennessee, will likely leverage that regulatory groundwork as it evaluates potential sites across its seven-state region.
The TVA and ENTRA1 Energy on Tuesday said they will now begin “identifying opportunities to work with other federal agencies and explore potential sites with new nuclear generation and joint gas-fired capabilities.”
TVA operates three existing nuclear sites—Browns Ferry (three units, 3.8 GW), Sequoyah (two units, 2.3 GW), and Watts Bar (two units, 2.3 GW). The utility also maintains 29 hydroelectric dams and multiple thermal generation sites including 17 natural gas-fired power plants. These sites include Allen (Tennessee), Ackerman and Caledonia (Mississippi), Brownsville, Colbert, Gallatin, Gleason, John Sevier, Johnsonville, and Lagoon Creek (Tennessee), Kingston (Tennessee), Kemper and Magnolia (Mississippi), Marshall County (Alabama), Paradise (Kentucky), and Southaven (Mississippi). TVA is also building new combustion turbine and combined cycle facilities are under construction at Cumberland (Tennessee) and Kingston (Tennessee).
The utility launched its New Nuclear Program in February 2022 with a $200 million investment to explore advanced reactor deployment. Current efforts making headway include a potential BWRX-300 reactor at Clinch River, for which TVA submitted an application to the NRC this summer. If built, the Clinch River unit—dubbed CRN-1—will serve as a flagship for U.S. commercial deployment of the BWRX-300.
During a May 7 board meeting, TVA’s newly appointed president and CEO Don Moul noted the SMR application is part of a broader portfolio of new generation that TVA is advancing to meet surging power demand across its seven-state region. TVA’s current planning assumption includes building about 5.5 GW of new firm dispatchable generation, he noted.
—Sonal Patel is a POWER senior editor (@sonalcpatel, @POWERmagazine).
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