Nuclear energy had a breakthrough year on Capitol Hill in 2024, but lawmakers and advocates may be setting their sights a bit lower for the foreseeable future.
Instead of a big, bipartisan bill like the one that passed Congress last year, boosters are instead eyeing small-bore actions like scrounging for funding for current projects.
A top Senate Republican said a major priority for her will be implementing the ADVANCE Act, the 2024 law boosting the advanced nuclear industry. And while another top Republican is seeking a financial backstop for the industry, some in Congress have misgivings.
Crucially, reaching across the aisle will be necessary for anything to get done.
“Whatever we end up doing, it’s probably going to be a bipartisan effort,” said Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy. “We need more power generation in this country, and we all agree that nuclear is one of the ways we can get more power out there.”
That bipartisanship is already being tested. In the first 30 days of Republican-controlled Washington, Democrats have been enraged at the Trump administration over funding freezes and other executive actions.
Some top Democrats say they’ll refuse to work with Republicans on big-ticket items like permitting until the administration reverses course. And Congress continues to spin its wheels on fiscal 2025 spending, with less than a month to avert a government shutdown.
Adding to those woes is the loss of several pivotal nuclear boosters in Congress. Former Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Tom Carper (D-Del.) and former E&C Energy Subcommittee Chair Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) — two of the main authors of the ADVANCE Act — have left Congress.
Some cold water for new bill
Some, however, are vowing to forge ahead. In the Senate, Jim Risch (R-Idaho), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is trying to build support for the “Accelerating Reliable Capacity (ARC) Act” among his colleagues.
The bill, unveiled in December, would provide up to $3.6 billion in federal cost insurance to three or more over-budget next-generation nuclear reactor projects. A spokesperson for Risch did not immediately return a request for comment on when the bill might be introduced this Congress.
The idea of federal cost overrun insurance has long been pushed by nuclear boosters and the industry as a way to ensure that utilities and other power providers actually buy nuclear reactors by minimizing the significant associated financial risk.
The bill’s $3.6 billion cost overrun program would pull from two Department of Energy sources: $2.5 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act’s Section 1706 loan guarantee program and $1.1 billion from DOE’s Civil Nuclear Credit Program.
That funding, if doled out, would be forgiven, meaning utilities would not not be expected to pay back the funds if they use it to purchase a new reactor project.
Jeremy Harrell, CEO of the pro-nuclear advocacy firm ClearPath, is pushing to gather support for the measure in Congress, said lawmakers from both parties were already engaging on the idea.
“I can tell you, we have gotten a lot of questions and feedback from Republicans and Democrats on it,” Harrell said. “There’s a lot of excitement, and I mean, folks recognize that this is the next step.”
Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), one of Congress’ most aggressive nuclear boosters, is skeptical of the idea. He and others believe future nuclear projects shouldn’t have to rely on government funding to be viable, especially after the billions nuclear developers have already received in recent years from DOE programs.
“I’ve got mixed feelings, because I think we need to build it and build it right,” said Fleischmann, who chairs the Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittee. “I don’t want the federal government getting stuck with a bill if the contractors don’t get it right.”
Democrats have also generally been averse to pull funds from the Loan Programs Office, which has provided billions in financial assistance to burgeoning clean energy projects. Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), however, did say he “could see merit” in the proposal if leftover funding from LPO is available.
Risch, for his part, said he wasn’t looking to pass the bill in the near future as lawmakers get familiar with the legislation’s ins and outs. The bill could be a target to ride in other must-pass legislation later in the year, like the upcoming fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.
“I haven’t really been shopping it aggressively, but look, it’s a good idea, and it’s backed by industry,” Risch said. “But I want it to pass, so there may be some opportunities later in the year.”
Scraping for DOE funding
In addition to pushing Risch’s bill, Harrell said the industry and its advocates are telling lawmakers to continue funding various Department of Energy programs boosting nuclear deployment.
“The No. 1 priority this year is ensuring that the big demonstration programs that are already in the works, that have bipartisan support and that were launched by the Trump administration stay on track,” Harrell said.
Perhaps DOE’s signature work in this area is its Advanced Reactor Demonstration program, which has received over $3.2 billion in funding from Congress to help support next-generation reactors to reach economic readiness since its inception in 2020.
Even new, advanced nuclear reactors, which have smaller factory-built designs meant to reduce costs, have faced budget overruns and missed deadlines, which analysts say have spooked power providers from buying new reactors.
Most notably, NuScale Power, an advanced reactor developer, and a group of local electric utilities announced last year that they had abandoned plans to build six first-of-a-kind modular reactors in Idaho due to rising costs and supply chain issues.
An increase in funding for the ADRP initiative would likely come from the appropriations process, which has faced months of stagnation as negotiators have failed to come together to develop and pass fiscal 2025 spending bills with a March 14 deadline approaching.
From his perch on Appropriations, Fleischmann has come up with creative ways to provide funding for nuclear priorities as Republicans have consistently sought to reduce government spending. In 2023, he took $3.6 billion away from a DOE program supporting existing reactors to augment domestic uranium production needed for next-generation reactors.
And last year, Fleischmann backed a proposal to claw back $8 billion from DOE’s Loan Program Office, which has received significant funding from Democrats’ 2022 climate law, and transfer it to DOE’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. It remains to be seen if that funding mechanism will be used in fiscal 2025 spending bills.
The pro-nuclear lobbying group Third Way has pointed out that LPO funding has been instrumental in the success of recent nuclear projects, including Units 3 and 4 at Plant Vogtle in Georgia that were financed with over $12 billion in loan guarantees.
Fleischmann himself acknowledged that creative funding mechanisms for DOE’s nuclear programs are running out and that he may need the Trump administration to get behind dedicated funding to the program in the upcoming budget.
“If we continue to do that, there may not be any existing funding left to tap,” he said. “So we have to look for an alternative funding source, which will hopefully be the president’s budget.”
Implementing ADVANCE Act
For Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), the brunt of her energy will be dedicated to ensuring that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission follows the letter of the law on implementing the ADVANCE Act.
“We want to make sure that the NRC is fulfilling its obligations in terms of speeding up and modernizing,” Capito said. “So I think we’ll do some oversight first before we move and do another ADVANCE act.”
The ADVANCE Act specifically streamlines the permitting process for advanced reactors, reduces regulatory fees for companies looking to license advanced reactor technologies and updates outdated rules that limit international investment.
Those provisions are an attempt to address long-standing criticisms from the nuclear industry that the NRC’s culture and statutory requirements have resulted in a byzantine and over-the-top regulatory structure that has stifled nuclear deployment.
Capito has already signaled that the NRC is not doing enough to change the culture there as laid about by the ADVANCE Act. Last year, Capito criticized an agency staff proposal implementing one of the law’s most controversial provisions to widen the agency’s mission statement past a “safety-only” mandate.
That advocacy seemed to have a direct result. The agency, now led by Republican Commissioner David Wright, issued an updated mission statement in January that more explicitly formalized the agency’s pledge to “be a part of the solution” in bringing new nuclear energy projects to life across the country.
“The Commission demonstrated leadership by moving away from the lackluster NRC staff proposal and instead creating a positive, forward-looking vision for how the NRC can enable the use and deployment of nuclear energy,” Capito said after the mission statement was finalized.
Capito’s advocacy on the mission statement is likely only the beginning of her oversight. She said that she would be looking closely at upcoming NRC reports on the progress of implementing the ADVANCE Act in the coming months.
This story also appears in Energywire.
