Columbia's EPU: +162 MWe by 2031 — the same instrument Big Tech just adopted, from the public-power side
From the Energy digest for 2026-10-03
What happened: Energy Northwest's ANS profile (Oct 2, 5:10 PM ET): Columbia Generating Station (WA's third-largest generator, the region's only operating nuclear plant, BPA's baseload partner) is advancing an extended power uprate of ~162 MWe to the northwestern grid by 2031, with +24 MWe of efficiency upgrades staged through scheduled refueling outages. Already at 106.7% of originally licensed thermal (SPR 1999 + MUR 2017); licensed through 2043 with a 20-year subsequent-license-renewal planned.
What's genuinely new: the uprate-as-instrument thesis (Amazon/Calvert Cliffs, Georgia Power, both in the Oct 2 record) now has a not-for-profit public-power datapoint with a dated target — the demand isn't only hyperscaler money; existing-plant megawatts are being chased across the fleet. NRC has approved 170+ uprates since the 1970s; the binding constraint everywhere is outage scheduling plus component scope, and Columbia's answer is the same one the private uprates take.
Links: ANS