The Summit, summarized in a White House Fact Sheet, acknowledged the large role nuclear plays in supporting energy production (nearly 20% last year), jobs (about 60K jobs directly, and hundreds of thousands of jobs indirectly), and the key role it plays in clean energy (nuclear provides about half of the carbon free power in the U.S.).

The Summit was held to highlight the collective progress underway in both the public and private sectors to support nuclear energy. The Administration emphasized its efforts to support nuclear energy, including signing on to last year’s multi-country declaration at COP28 to triple nuclear energy capacity globally by 2050; developing new reactor designs; extending the service lives of existing nuclear reactors; and growing the momentum behind new deployments.   

A number of new announcements came out of the Summit, including the following:

• Creation of a Nuclear Power Project Management and Delivery Working Group.  To help drive reactor deployment while ensuring ratepayers and project stakeholders are better protected, the Administration announced the creation of a Nuclear Power Project Management and Delivery working group that will draw on leading experts from across the nuclear and megaproject construction industry to help identify opportunities to proactively mitigate sources of cost and schedule overrun risk.  Membership in the Working Group will be made up of federal government entities, including the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy, the White House Office of Clean Energy Innovation & Implementation, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the Department of Energy.  The Working Group will further engage with a broad range of stakeholders, including project developers, engineering, procurement and construction firms, utilities, investors, labor organizations, academics, and NGOs, to collect views on how to help further the Administration’s goal of delivering nuclear power.
• Army RFI for reactors across multiple Army sites in the U.S.  The United States Army announced that it will soon release a Request for Information to inform a deployment program for advanced reactors to power multiple Army sites in the United States.  Small modular nuclear reactors and microreactors can provide defense installations resilient energy for several years amid the threat of physical or cyberattacks, extreme weather, pandemic biothreats, and other emerging challenges that can all disrupt commercial energy networks.  Alongside the current defense programs through the Department of the Air Force microreactor pathfinder at Eielson AFB and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) Project Pele prototype transportable microreactor protype, the Army is taking a key role in exploring the deployment of advanced reactors that help meet their energy needs.  These efforts will help inform the regulatory and supply chain pathways that will pave for additional deployments of advanced nuclear technology to provide clean, reliable energy for federal installations and other critical infrastructure.
• Department of Energy primer on advanced reactors enhanced safety features.  Additionally, the Department of Energy released a new primer, highlighting the expected enhanced safety of advanced nuclear reactors including passive core cooling capabilities and advanced fuel designs. Idaho National Laboratory is also releasing a new advanced nuclear reactor capital cost reduction pathway tool that will help developers and stakeholders to assess cost drivers for new projects.

The White House also summarized some recent, key developments in the nuclear energy sector for both new projects and the existing fleet, including the following:

Support for new projects

• DOE’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP) provides significant funding for nuclear demonstration and risk reduction projects. Awardees include Gen IV reactor vendors and developers TerraPower, X-energy, Kairos Power, Westinghouse, BWX Technologies, and Southern Company.
• President Biden signed a Congressional appropriations package providing $800 million to fund up to two Gen III+ SMR demonstration projects.  The implementation of this will be announced later this year. This package also appropriated $100 Million for Gen III+ SMR design, licensing, supplier development, and site preparation.
• Both the production and investment tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act.
• DOE’s release of a coal-to-nuclear technical study and information guide, highlighting the potential for more than 300 plant conversions and their ability to transition jobs and can be an economic boom for the communities they support
• Department of Defense funding for Project Pele to develop a prototype microreactor (Gen IV) design for future use at defense installations.
• The Export-Import Bank of the United States and U.S. Department of State development of the EXIM SMR Financing Toolkit, a suite of financial tools to support SMR deployments and help U.S. exporters compete in the global SMR market.
• Centrus Energy Corporation produced the nation’s first 100 kilograms of high-assay low-enriched uranium, a crucial material required by many advanced reactor designs. The production was the first of its kind in the United States in more than 70 years and completed a key milestone in DOE’s HALEU Demonstration project in Piketon, Ohio. Centrus is expected to ramp up its production rate of HALEU material to 900 kilograms per year starting in 2024. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 also provided $700 million to help establish a reliable domestic supply of fuels for advanced reactors using HALEU.
• X-Energy was allocated $148 million in tax credits under the Qualifying Advanced Energy Project Credit program (IRC section 48C) for an advanced nuclear fuel fabrication facility, which will make TRISO particle fuel.
• The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2024 made available $100 million for nuclear workforce training programs at universities, 2-year colleges, and trade schools.
• DOE’s Advanced Research Program Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is also hosting several earlier stage R&D programs for advanced nuclear, including $87 million of funding to 30 projects with the aims of lower capital costs, lower O&M costs, and reducing spent fuel.
• On May 13, President Biden signed into law the “Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act” which imposes a ban on imported enriched uranium from Russia unless importers receive a waiver granted by the Secretary of Energy. It also unlocks up to $2.72 billion made available at the President’s request by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2024 to jumpstart new enrichment capacity in the United States for LEU and HALEU.
• The White House also acknowledged efforts by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to support new reactor licensing. 

Support for the existing fleet

• Completion of the Units 3 and 4 of the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia, the first new reactors built in the United States in over 30 years, noting that the Vogtle site is now the largest source of clean power in America, with four operating nuclear reactors. The White House further noted that the DOE Loan Programs Office (LPO) has committed $12 billion in loan guarantees for the construction of this project as well as provided technical expertise, project monitoring, and issue mitigation support that would have been otherwise unavailable in the private sector.
• Support for the Palisades nuclear plant restart in Michigan, which would be the first U.S. nuclear plant to restart after shutting down.  The restart is supported by a $1.5 billion conditional loan commitment from the DOE LPO, as well as the use of the DOE Civil Nuclear Credit program to fund the life extension for Diablo Canyon.
• The production tax credit in the Inflation Reduction Act, giving existing plants more economic security to keep operating.

Taken together, the White house noted, these actions represent a large and sustained push to accelerate civil nuclear deployment in the United States, which is critical to ensure the United States sustained leadership in nuclear energy.