The Nuclear ADVANCE Act - Episode 91

The nuclear industry achieved something remarkable in July - full bipartisan support of new legislation aimed at supercharging growth of this clean energy technology.

Paul digs into the specifics of the ADVANCE act, why it makes sense for helping to license new reactors faster (and cheaper), and why it garnered rare bipartisan support.

For further reference:

"Congress votes to advance nuclear energy development in the US" - Verge

"The Senate just passed a critical clean energy bill to pave the way for more nuclear" - CNN

"Nuclear Power" - Our World in Data

"ADVANCE Act Strikes Right Balance for Nuclear Energy Regulation" - Harvard Law Review

"Newly Signed Bill Will Boost Nuclear Reactor Deployment in the United States" - DOE

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Transcript

This is Eight Minutes – a podcast helping you understand the energy and climate challenge in just a few minutes – I’m your host, Paul Schuster.

It is rare to find anything that both sides of the political aisle can agree upon these days. Even rarer when that involves clean electricity. But in July, both parties came together and overwhelmingly supported the Nuclear ADVANCE act, a piece of legislation that the industry is touting as an important tool to help recharge nuclear power in the US.

Let’s dissect what this legislation does (and does not) do – and why it bucked the trend to assemble such bipartisan support.

Eight Minutes – it’s how long it takes the sun’s rays to hit earth – or how long the football offseason lasted this year! Teasing – I enjoyed EVERY minute that my Michigan Wolverines were National Champions!  … Let’s get it on!

Believe it or not, the United States boasts the world’s largest fleet of nuclear power reactors. According to Ember’s 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy, the US generates about 775 terrawatt hours of nuclear electricity each year – while second place China generates about 435 terrawatt hours.

But, most of that nuclear power is OLD. We’ve built a grand total of TWO reactors in the past thirty years. And THOSE projects came at huge cost overruns and delays. Billions and billions of dollars of added expense.

Nuclear, though, *should* hold a role in the clean energy transition. It generates zero emissions, is baseloaded – we could solve a LOT of problems if we could figure out how to build a new fleet of nuclear reactors … and, figure out where to store the waste. But that’s a topic for another episode.

*this* episode is about how Congress came together across the blue and red divide and united on the need to pass some interesting nuclear reforms to help re-jump start this industry. The Accelerating Deployment of Versatile Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act was signed into law on July 9th by President Biden. It boasted a vote of 88 to 2 in the Senate after sailing through the House at 393 to 14.

Support for nuclear cuts across the aisle – and the ADVANCE act has been praised as a workable compromise.

The Act tackles a few things at once. For one, it aims to reduce the cost of regulatory review. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is tasked with reviewing and licensing new reactors – a task that typically takes about 100,000 hours of billed time. The ADVANCE Act looks to streamline that effort while also reducing the rate that the NRC can charge applicants – down from $317 an hour to about $160 per hour. That translated to tens of millions of dollars in savings.

And then the ACT made no bones about supporting so-called “advanced” reactor technologies. The current nuclear fleet uses something called light water reactors. In this technology, fuel rods are immersed in normal, every day water in order to both cool the rods as well as to moderate the fission reaction. Advanced reactors, such as those favored by the new legislation, look to build on this technology with different coolants, enhanced fuel utilization, increased thermal efficiency and increased safety features.

Keep in mind that we’ve constructed all of TWO traditional, light water reactors at Vogtle Unit 3 and Unit 4 in the past 30 years – so these advanced designs … are basically going to be first of a kind units. Not to say that that’s bad, but the ADVANCE act definitely puts a priority on these newer technologies – which is going bring with it new risks, too.

The Act incentivizes the development of some of this new technology by setting out monetary prizes for entities who reach certain milestones first. Milestones such as the first licensed advanced reactor or the first such to use spent fuel or depleted uranium. There’s an incentive on producing process heat for industrial applications as well as a couple more. I *think* that they are trying to tap into excitement around things like the X-Prize or the Sunshot or Earthshot programs, but, really, the incentives aren’t as freewheeling as those programs are. For one thing, TerraPower, a Bill Gates backed advanced reactor company, has already submitted an applicated back in March – and, well, if all things go right they’re the ones likely to win back about $12Million in prize incentives.

Those advanced technologies, by the way, don’t need to be huge, behemoth power reactors, either. The ACT specifically mentions support for small modular reactors as well as microreactors.

I’ve mentioned SMRs on a previous podcast, but these new technologies are trying to overcome that huge cost challenge that entangled the two Vogtle units. Namely, a nuclear renaissance is NOT going to happen at 3x cost overruns and $30+B of construction costs. What SMRs try to do is A) go smaller and b) set these things up so that much of the work can be done at a facility and then only final assembly is really needed at the place of installation. Theoretically, at least, that could save a ton of money and drive us down the learning curve even faster.

Microreactors are a bit different, in that these are small enough units that the intent isn’t to power full cities – but more to power smaller microgrids. These units could fit on the back of a flatbed truck, for instance, and drive to an area where clean electricity is needed for a reliability or hazard response.

One of the big entities looking at deploying these types of systems is, not surprisingly, our military – as the flexibility of mobile power answers a lot of supply chain issues and resiliency in different arenas.

As with any bill, not everyone was pleased with the final design. Some nuclear advocates lament that the NRC has authority to require nuclear facilities to meet safety and emissions burdens that are much more strenuous that other infrastructure projects. And environmentalists point out that the act does nothing to answer the long gestating question about what to do with spent fuel over time. And entities such as the Union of Concerned Scientists raised good points on whether the NRC reforms could somehow weaken safety and security oversight of new projects.

And other parties have raised concerns as to whether focusing solely on new, advanced technologies risks more harm than good – especially if we lose the valuable learnings (however painfully gained they may have been) from the recent completion of Vogtle 3 and 4. If we’re moving away from tried and true light water reactors, what DON’T we know about what’s next?

Nuclear *could* play a big role in the clean energy transition – and it’s a technology that has obviously gained advocates on both sides of the aisle. Conservatives love the baseloaded power and ability to support heavy industries such as steel while progressives are enamored by the zero emissions nature of the power.

But – nuclear is very much, still, a risky technology. Not risky from a safety perspective, necessarily, but from an economic and financial risk viewpoint. While the ADVANCE act aims to incentivize research and construction and to help the nuclear industry make its OWN pivot toward advanced technologies – there really are no guarantees that this is going to work. 

But any technology that has this much bipartisan support should at least get a shot at it, though.

I’m Paul Schuster – and this has been your eight minutes.