Sen. Crapo extols ‘broad bipartisan support’ for nuclear power, ADVANCE Act signed by President
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The ADVANCE act was signed into law by President Joe Biden Tuesday, solidifying America’s commitment to include nuclear energy as a significant player in its energy portfolio while advancing the research and regulatory processes needed to deploy advanced nuclear power projects in the future.
“The objective here is to help America regain and restrengthen its leadership in the development of nuclear power and recognize that we’ve got to be very aggressive in doing so,” Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, told EastIdahoNews.com in an exclusive interview.
The bill, the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act of 2023, is cosponsored by Crapo and Idaho Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho.
Its purpose is to “enhance United States civil nuclear leadership, support the licensing of advanced nuclear technologies, strengthen the domestic nuclear energy fuel cycle and supply chain, and improve the regulation of nuclear energy, and for other purposes.”
The law passed with significant bipartisan support in both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, receiving an 88-2 vote in the Senate on June 18 and 393-13 support in the House on May 8.
“The sentiment and demand for nuclear energy is at its highest in decades. We must ensure red tape does not prevent investment and innovation in new technologies,” Risch said in a June 20 news release. “The ADVANCE Act’s passage in the Senate will streamline permitting and deployment of advanced nuclear reactors and strengthen our existing fleet.”
“Today is a momentous day for our climate and America’s clean energy future,” U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Chairman Tom Carper, D-Delaware, said in a news release Tuesday. “The urgency of the climate crisis demands a swift transition to cleaner energy sources, and fortunately the ADVANCE Act helps us to do just that. This bipartisan law will strengthen our energy and national security, lower greenhouse gas emissions and create thousands of new jobs, while ensuring the continued safety of this zero-emissions energy source.”
The new law is expected to provide a major boost to the U.S. nuclear energy industry.
Crapo said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has not granted permission to construct a new nuclear power plant in the United States for decades.
The law will give the NRC “the financial support, the budgetary support and the legislative mandate that they must move ahead aggressively in deploying new technologies and doing the permitting process much faster than they had in the past,” Crapo said. “And doing it in a way that continues to protect safety and soundness.”
It “tasks the NRC to identify and incorporate advanced manufacturing techniques to build nuclear reactors better, faster, cheaper, and smarter,” according to a release from his office.
“(It) lets us start moving forward in development of new nuclear models — the small modular reactors, the small microreactors and the new types of reactors that are being developed through our research,” Crapo said. “Secondly, it helps to reduce barriers for international investment in nuclear power in the United States and facilitates the research that is critical for us to move forward.”
Additionally, the act facilitates a permitting process for previous fossil fuel energy generation and brownfield sites to be transformed into nuclear energy facilities.
The law also states that it “restricts the possession in the United States of nuclear fuel that is fabricated by Russian or Chinese entities.”
“It builds on legislation that we’ve done for the last four or five years to, first of all, make sure that the United States prioritizes the development of nuclear energy,” Crapo said.
Crapo previously sponsored the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act (NEICA) in 2018, which was signed into law by President Donald Trump.
After decades of bipartisan battles over nuclear energy, both Republicans and Democrats in Congress are uniting around the need to develop the nuclear industry in America.
“As a result of the fact that, increasingly, the environmental community and others are recognizing that nuclear power is probably the most important source of what they consider to be clean energy, the whole mood in Washington has changed,” Crapo said. “We have bipartisan support moving forward now, and this legislation is one of the strongest, newest examples of that.”
The law will help the United States maintain its leadership in the field of nuclear research and development, Crapo said, allowing U.S. companies to create new reactor types, test them effectively and market them to the rest of the world.
The law also creates a prize as a reward for companies that “deploy next-generation reactors,” according to Crapo’s release.
“So there’s a bit of a competition to be the first ones who prove out and get the regulatory permitting and everything put into place properly, because there will be significant financial support for the implementation of that technology as it gets permitted,” Crapo said.
The act’s text says “preserving and expanding the nation’s use of clean and reliable nuclear energy is essential to advancing the energy and national security interests of the United States and achieving our environmental goals.”
Today, 94 reactors operate in the United States, providing about 20% of the nation’s electricity. Half of America’s carbon-free energy is produced by nuclear power, the law states.
Crapo hopes that the legislation will encourage the construction of future commercial nuclear projects in Idaho and elsewhere.
In November 2023, NuScale’s Carbon Free Power Project was cancelled amid rising construction costs and insufficient subscriptions. The project had planned to build six 77-megawatt, small nuclear power modules on Idaho National Laboratory land. The design was the first small modular reactor to be approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“Using the NuScale project as an example of what could have been, we need to have more commercial activity of nuclear power in Idaho,” he said. “I believe this legislation will facilitate not just the research and government activities like that at the Idaho National Laboratory, but the actual construction of commercial facilities and proving them out in the state of Idaho.”
On the whole, Crapo remains optimistic about the future of nuclear energy in America.
“We are going to need massive amounts of energy in the coming decades. Those amounts can better be met by nuclear power than other source that we have today,” he said. “… We intend to move forward on every front to speed up the development, initiation and launching of additional nuclear power production in the United States.”
