Recently, the Hill has been taking a flurry of legislative actions that impact the advanced reactor community across all spectra.  We provide a summary of some of the major bills going through Congress below, including a couple which have recently become law or may become so soon.

Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act (NEICA) (S. 97). This bill, which has a long history before Congress, finally passed both the House and Senate on September 24, and was signed by the President into law Friday September 28.  The text of the enrolled bill (the bill that has passed both chambers of Congress in identical form and sent to be signed) can be found here.

NEICA tackles a number of issues, but as a theme largely directs the US Department of Energy (DOE) to move forward on a number of actions long advocated for by the advanced reactor community—including opening up the labs more for private sector use, advancing a test reactor plan, and increasing collaboration with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).  As provided in the bill summary, DOE is instructed to:

• Determine the need for a versatile reactor-based fast neutron source, which shall operate as a national user facility, and put forward a plan to construct and operate such a facility by the end of 2025.
• Enhance its high-performance computation modeling and simulation techniques for advanced reactors.
• Lead a program for testing of advanced reactor concepts (including physical testing), with a focus on removing licensing and technical uncertainty.  As part of this, the DOE is to work closely with the NRC to share technical expertise developed from this testing program and grant NRC staff access to the program and related sites to learn from any testing.  The goal of this is to help ensure the NRC has sufficient resources to license any reactor designs being tested.
• Submit a budget proposal to Congress to perform the above activities.
• Submit a report to Congress on fusion technologies under development (fusion is included within the bill’s broad definition of “advanced reactor”), with a focus on those technologies that can provide net energy production within 15 years after the start of construction of test or prototype facilities.
• Develop an “Advanced Nuclear Energy Cost-Share Grant Program” to assist in paying NRC licensing fees for new reactor designs, including early stage activities such as development of a licensing plan.

NEICA was signed Friday along with H.R. 589, the DOE Research and Innovation Act, which also aims to shape DOE’s research agenda and use of the national laboratories to improve research collaboration and technology commercialization.

Energy-Related Appropriations Legislation (H.R. 5895). The President signed a broad appropriations bill on September 21, which covered funding for DOE.  The text of the enrolled bill can be found here, but summaries of the bill’s core DOE funding provisions can be found in a conference report, and a summary provided by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) here.  As represented in the AIP summary, the bill is largely a victory for DOE, with funding increases seemingly across the board, including a 10% increase in funding to the Office of Nuclear Energy and $65 million set aside for the versatile fast-neutron test reactor described above.

Nuclear Utilization of Keynote Energy Act (H.R. 1320). This bill passed the House on September 25.  The text of the bill can be found here.  It is targeted at NRC reform, and seeks among other things to:

• Codify that up to $10.3M of the NRC’s work for advanced reactor readiness is to be removed from fee recovery (it also puts a cap on many other licensees’ annual fees).
• Study the effect of removing the Atomic Energy Act’s restriction on foreign ownership, control, or domination of nuclear licenses (primarily affecting reactor licenses).
• Study the elimination of the mandatory hearing requirement for uncontested reactor license applications.
• Allow for the adoption of more informal hearing requirements for licensing proceedings.
• Instruct the NRC as to more efficiently processing license applications, with a 42 month timeline for issuing safety and environmental reports after docketing of the application.
• Establish community advisory boards in areas where plants are undergoing decommissioning.

Nuclear Energy Leadership Act (S. 3422). This bill was introduced into the Senate earlier this month, with 9  The text of the bill can be found here, and we provide a thorough summary in our past blog entry.  This bill would build on the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act to, among other things:

• Direct the U.S. government to enter into long-term power purchase agreements with nuclear reactors.
• Promote the development of advanced reactors and fuel by strategically aligning U.S. government and industry interests, which is intended to enable U.S. developers to compete with their state-sponsored competitors from Russia and China.
• Further push DOE to construct a fast neutron-capable research facility, which is crucial to test important new nuclear technologies and demonstrate their safe and reliable operation. Currently the only two facilities in the world like this are in Russia and China.
• Develop a source of high-assay low-enriched uranium, which is the intended fuel for many advanced reactor designs, from U.S. government stockpiles. Again, both China and Russia have these capabilities domestically, but the U.S. does not.

This bill recognizes the national security implications that come with the long-term neglect of our nuclear industry, which is outlined in our recent paper published by Center for Strategic and International Studies, entitled  “Back from the Brink: A Threatened Nuclear Energy Industry Compromises National Security.”

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This review only highlights some of the nuclear-related bills currently before Congress—others of which also touch on reform to, e.g., our national nuclear export controls regime.

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