SMRs in rural Arizona would be exempt from review if the units are colocated with certain large industrial loads or built at power plants that previously received environmental certification.
- Arizona utilities would be allowed to bypass a key state environmental review process to deploy small modular nuclear reactors on or near certain power plants and large rural industrial sites, including data centers, under a bill that cleared the state House of Representatives on Feb. 26.
- In most Arizona counties, the bill would supersede any local zoning restrictions on the construction and operation of colocated SMRs, provided the host facility received all required zoning entitlements, according to a March 7 fact sheet developed by Arizona Senate staff.
- Arizona House Majority Leader Michael Carbone, R, introduced the bill on Feb. 10, days after the state’s three largest utilities announced a joint effort to assess “a wide range of possible locations” for the siting and deployment of nuclear reactors.
The collaboration among Arizona Public Service, Salt River Project and Tucson Electric Power would consider options for both small modular reactors and “potential large reactor projects,” the utilities said Feb. 5.
The utilities have applied for a grant through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Generation III+ Small Modular Reactor Program, they said. The Gen III+ SMR program will provide up to $800 million to “two first-mover teams of utility, reactor vendor, constructor, and end-users or power off-takers” committed to an initial SMR deployment and developing a multi-reactor order book, according to DOE.
The utilities called the application a first step in a broader effort to “explore the possibility” of adding nuclear capacity in Arizona, possibly at retiring coal-fired power plant sites. The trio could select a preferred nuclear site later this decade “at the earliest, potentially enabling additional nuclear to be in operation in the early 2040s,” they said.
“We know the development timeline would be long, so it makes sense for our state’s energy providers to begin this preliminary evaluation as soon as possible,” Tucson Electric Power President Susan Gray said in February.
Carbone’s bill allows a utility to construct an SMR in Arizona after providing 30 days’ notice to the Arizona Corporation Commission, the state utility regulator, provided the SMR complies with applicable state, federal and local laws and is colocated with a large industrial user.
The utility would not have to apply to the ACC for a certificate of environmental compatibility, as is typically required for new generation and transmission projects, according to the Arizona Senate fact sheet.
The bill also allows utilities to bypass the certificate of environmental compatibility process to construct a new or replacement SMR if the SMR is located “on or immediately adjacent to” a power plant that previously received a certificate of environmental compatibility or was in operation before Aug. 13, 1971. This allowance covers SMRs built to replace existing thermal generation units.
The bill requires the ACC to define colocation, large industrial user and eligible SMR types and sizes, provided the maximum nameplate capacity is at least 100 MW, according to the fact sheet.
The bill limits preemption of local land use ordinances related to SMR construction to counties with fewer than 500,000 people, according to the fact sheet. That comfortably excludes Arizona’s two largest counties, Maricopa and Pima, which are together home to about 75% of the state’s population. Fast-growing Pinal County crossed the 500,000-person threshold in 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
