NJ approves $260M in tax breaks for Holtec Camden factory
Can power plant parts maker scale up to nuclear stations?
New Jersey economic development officials have approved a $26 million a year, 10 year taxbreak for Holtec, a Marlton power plant parts maker that wants to start building nuclear power plants, so it can build a plant employing 235 new and 160 relocated workers in Camden, reports my colleague Maddie Hanna here.
Holtec currently makes heat exchangers, nuclear fuel containers and other large parts at an old Westinghouse factory near Pittsburgh and a second facility in Ohio. It is building another plant in an export zone in India, and has a proposal to add a factory in South Carolina. Holtec is developing what it calls the model SMR-160 small nuclear reactor with help from PSEG, New Jersey's dominant utility, which hopes to install the units at its Hope Creek-Salem nuclear facility, if federal nuclear officials approve its plan on schedule next year.
The new factory would employ hundreds making parts for the nuclear plants as well as more conventional parts. The state says Holtec won't handle nuclear fuel in Camden. More from Julia Terruso and Maddie Hanna here; more on Holtec here.