Mixed messages to the nuclear industry as Biden’s budget cuts funding for nuclear energy.

Biden’s Budget Cuts Funding For Nuclear Energy At A Pivotal Moment HuffPost Alexander C. Kaufman, Mar 21, 2023

For the first time since taking office, President Joe Biden cut funding for nuclear energy in his budget request, sending an unclear signal to an industry that has benefited from a firehose of federal spending in recently passed laws but depends heavily on long-term government support to reverse decades of decline.

The White House asked Congress for just under $1.6 billion for nuclear energy this year, down more than $210 million from the previous year. That doesn’t account for the billions dedicated to testing, financing, building and operating fission reactors in the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law, two key pieces of legislation passed during the 46th president’s first two years.

It’s also far from a done deal. The president’s budget request is generally viewed as a statement of priorities, and Congress has frequently deviated in recent years and provided more funding than what the administration proposed……………….

the past two years’ geyser of money ― expected to be doled out over the course of the next decade ― still falls short of what experts say is needed to turn the atomic power industry around in a country that hasn’t built a new reactor from the ground up in nearly half a century but has shuttered more than a dozen in just the past two decades…………………………

Since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission receives 90% of its budget from companies’ licensing fees, with direct federal funding providing just another 10%, the cuts primarily hit the Department of Energy, which is responsible for researching and developing novel technologies and approaches to harnessing the awesome power of split atoms to generate heat and electricity without the climate-changing emissions of fossil fuels…………………………………………………..

Skeptics of nuclear energy say the high upfront costs and glacial speed of building new reactors make atomic power too expensive and slow to provide a meaningful solution in the fight against climate change. …………………………………………………….

The one increase in the Energy Department’s nuclear funding is a 20% bump for the special kinds of fuel needed for companies participating in the government’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which seeks to commercialize technologies that go beyond the traditional pressurized water reactors used in most nuclear plants. The most widely used variety of advanced reactor fuel is exclusively sold by a Russian company, a challenge that has already caused delays for the Bill Gates-backed reactor startup TerraPower.

Last September, Biden requested $1.5 billion to boost domestic uranium production as part of a massive spending package to aid Ukraine ― only to be rebuffed by Congress. This time, the White House proposed giving the Energy Department’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains just $75 million to “support rebuilding domestic uranium production and enrichment capacity” through the Defense Production Act ― the first time the president’s budget has called for using the little-known Korean War-era statute for nuclear fuel……………………………………………….

After two years of Congress refusing to provide any funding, Biden’s budget request also slashed funding for the Versatile Test Reactor, a proposed government project at the Idaho National Laboratory that would help speed up research into new technologies and make existing ones more efficient. Currently, Russia operates the only such test reactor in the world.

The president’s previous budget proposed “the minimum level of funding needed just to keep the project alive without actually moving forward on building the thing,” said Adam Stein, the director of nuclear energy innovation at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental think tank that advocates for atomic power. The latest budget completely “zeroes it out.”……………………………. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-cuts-nuclear-energy-budget_n_6414b54fe4b0bc5cb6504a8c