May 29, 2024
May 29, 2024
USNIC Update
For decades, nuclear power has been the largest source of clean energy in the United States, accounting for 19% of total energy produced last year. The industry directly employs nearly 60,000 workers in good paying jobs, maintains these jobs for decades, and supports hundreds of thousands of other workers. In the midst of transformational changes taking place throughout the U.S. energy system, the Biden-Harris Administration is continuing to build on President Biden’s unprecedented goal of a carbon free electricity sector by 2035 while also ensuring that consumers across the country have access to affordable, reliable electric power, and creating good-paying clean energy jobs. Alongside renewable power sources like wind and solar, a new generation of nuclear reactors is now capturing the attention of a wide range of stakeholders for nuclear energy’s ability to produce clean, reliable energy and meet the needs of a fast-growing economy, driven by President Biden’s Investing in America agenda and manufacturing boom. The Administration recognizes that decarbonizing our power system, which accounts for a quarter of all the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, represents a pivotal challenge requiring all the expertise and ingenuity our nation can deliver.
The Biden-Harris Administration is today hosting a White House Summit on Domestic Nuclear Deployment, highlighting the collective progress being made from across the public and private sectors. Under President Biden’s leadership, the Administration has taken a number of actions to strengthen our nation’s energy and economic security by reducing – and putting us on the path to eliminating – our reliance on Russian uranium for civil nuclear power and building a new supply chain for nuclear fuel, 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. Recognizing the importance of both the existing U.S. nuclear fleet and continued build out of large nuclear power plants, the U.S. is also taking steps to mitigate project risks associated with large nuclear builds and position U.S. industry to support an aggressive deployment target.
To help drive reactor deployment while ensuring ratepayers and project stakeholders are better protected, the Administration is announcing today 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. Working group members 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 engage a range of stakeholders, including project developers, engineering, procurement and construction firms, utilities, investors, labor organizations, academics, and NGOs, which will each offer individual views on how to help further the Administration’s goal of delivering an efficient and cost-effective deployment of clean, reliable nuclear energy and ensuring that learnings translate to cost savings for future construction and deployment.
The United States Army is also announcing 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 the path for additional deployments of advanced nuclear technology to provide clean, reliable energy for federal installations and other critical infrastructure.
Additionally, the Department of Energy released today 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 Administration notes the completion of 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, and a result of the efforts and collaboration between utilities, developers, and end users to finance new nuclear projects, as well as the over 9,000 workers, many of whom were union, and the residents of Georgia to help the project reach a successful outcome. The Vogtle site is now the largest source of clean power in America, with four operating nuclear reactors. DOE financing and support made this project possible. The DOE Loan Programs Office (LPO) has committed $12 billion in loan guarantees for the construction as well as technical expertise, project monitoring, and issue mitigation support that would have been otherwise unavailable in the private sector. LPO’s low rates also means hundreds of millions of dollars in annual cost savings for Georgians.
The U.S. government will continue to take action to enable first movers to deploy advanced and innovative technologies. These announcements build upon a wide range of actions the Biden-Harris Administration has already taken, which include:
Reviving and revitalizing existing nuclear, while preserving jobs
Demonstrating and deploying new nuclear technologies
Streamlining licensing processes for building new reactors, extending the life of existing reactors, and expanding capacity of existing reactors
In anticipation of the growing interest in reactor deployment, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) continues to make strides in reforming its licensing and permitting processes to ensure that its reviews and analyses can be performed efficiently without compromising safety.
Advancing the supply chain and workforce
Taken together, these actions represent the largest sustained push to accelerate civil nuclear deployment in the United States in nearly five decades. President Biden will continue to take steps to reestablish U.S. leadership in the industry, including continuing to keep existing nuclear plants operational, supporting the demonstration and deployment of advanced reactor technologies, making permitting processes more efficient and effective, securing and expanding the nuclear fuel supply, strengthening nuclear safety, security, and safeguards, and supporting an ambitious strategy to ensure the nation’s nuclear leadership.
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