America’s Energy Future and the ADVANCE Act

Recently, the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act was enacted into law. It’s a great piece of bipartisan legislation, but it's worth placing into context with the state of our nuclear industry and the role that nuclear will play in the energy transition. This law is just one small solution in the extraordinarily vast challenge of bending the U.S. emissions curve by reviving our somewhat dormant nuclear industry.

First, I’ll note that the Advance Act garnered surprising bipartisan support. It passed by a vote of 393-13 in the House of Representatives and 88-2 in the Senate. Legislation related to nuclear energy has exhibited an interesting mix of partisanship and bipartisanship in recent years. Generally speaking, Democratic lawmakers have been more likely to support renewable energy sources like wind and solar, while some factions within the party have been skeptical of nuclear energy because of the safety and environmental concerns surrounding nuclear waste management and the potential for nuclear accidents which can provoke strong emotions. Conversely, certain Republican lawmakers have traditionally supported nuclear energy as a crucial component of the energy mix, emphasizing its potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions without the intermittency issues associated with renewables.

This latest example of bipartisanship recognizes nuclear's role in the clean energy transition. In recent years, there has been a growing acknowledgment of the role nuclear energy can play in achieving carbon neutrality. Initiatives aimed at supporting advanced nuclear technologies, such as small modular reactors (SMRs) and research into new nuclear technologies have garnered bipartisan support, reflecting a collective interest in innovation and energy security. Critically, there is recognition across the political spectrum of nuclear energy's potential to enhance energy independence and provide reliable baseload power, which can resonate with both conservative and progressive agendas.?

Much more work will be needed from both sides of the aisle because the complexity of nuclear energy policy means it is influenced by a range of factors, including technological advancements, public opinion and evolving climate goals, which can create opportunities for both collaboration and conflict among lawmakers.

It is heartening to see lawmakers embrace nuclear innovation, but there is a long journey ahead if we are to position the U.S. for the new age of nuclear and take advantage of its potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at home and exploit the opportunity to lead a global export market and project “soft power” by helping other countries take advantage of technological innovation without the sort of conditions that China typically demands.?????

At its core, the ADVANCE act helps accelerate the building of nuclear reactors by creating new initiatives and reducing some licensing fees. The details of this law are important but we need to place it into context. The average age of our 54 nuclear reactors is 42 and we have built just one singular power station since 2016. There are over 80 small modular reactor (SMR) designs in development globally, with most still in the design stage. Only China and Russia have successfully built and operated an SMR. As usual, it's not the lack of U.S. innovation or the potential of our capital markets that is holding us back. We know the appetite is absolutely there because the U.S. has the most SMR technology designs with 22, followed by Russia’s 17, China’s 10 and Japan’s 5 but our permitting and regulatory framework is holding us back.? This is the reality of the race to deploy SMRs.

• China has 55 units in operation and 19 more under construction.
• India has 8 reactors under construction.
• Russia has 4 reactors under construction.
• Turkey has 4 reactors under construction.
• South Korea has 3 reactors under construction.

Overhauling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)

While the NRC is technically funded by Congress, the agency is statutorily required to collect about 90% of its $1.01 billion budget through fees charged to licensees. (If you don’t like math, that’s about $979.2 million in fees.)?

A few years back, I spoke to a nuclear engineer at a party, who explained the essence of his job: responding to all new regulations while simultaneously cutting operations costs while explaining to customers why the cost of the plant continued to rise. His view was of a regulatory regime that continued to create new regulations every year for power stations that had been operating for over 40 years. There is a perverse incentive built into our model that almost requires our regulators to write more regulation and pass the cost on to the generators to keep their funding. It's probably true that additional regulation is also motivated by fear of something going wrong or a lawsuit but we need to fundamentally adjust our aspiration from safely maintaining an aging fleet to reinvigorating our nuclear industry to meet the challenge of global warming, national energy security and geopolitics.?

What Congress needs to do now is reform our regulatory and licensing regime to meet our demand for emissions-free nuclear power and match the scale of the problem presented by climate change combined with a virtual doubling of electricity demand over the next 30 years. We can do it, but it will require real work and bipartisan action in Congress!