Illustration: Lazaro Gamio/Axios
Congress is set to take real action to shore up uranium supply chains.
Why it matters: The U.S. has very little capacity right now, and there's bipartisan concern about Russia's role as a dominant global supplier.
Driving the news: The final defense authorization bill, which dropped late Wednesday night, includes the Nuclear Fuel Security Act — legislation that nuclear energy advocates see as an important early step in developing a domestic supply of enriched uranium for advanced fission reactors.
- The Joe Manchin-John Barrasso bill would create a new program at the Energy Department to develop domestic supplies of low-enriched uranium, or LEU, and high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU.
- It would also create a demonstration program for DOE to supply advanced reactors until the U.S. can develop a commercial scale domestic fuel supply industry.
- The Senate tacked the legislation onto its version of the NDAA, and House Energy and Commerce marked up the bill as an individual measure earlier this week.
- But as we reported, the final NDAA conference report does not include the ADVANCE Act, the Senate's Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing reform proposal.
Between the lines: The full NDAA is likely to pass by next week (it cleared a Senate procedural vote Thursday). But we haven't heard the last word from this Congress on nuclear fuel.
- The House is set to vote next week on legislation from E&C Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers to ban Russian uranium imports.
- Barrasso, who sponsored similar legislation, told reporters today he thinks it would pass the Senate individually, too.
- And notably, the Senate security supplemental includes $2.7 billion for domestic HALEU and LEU – contingent on Congress or the Biden administration acting to limit Russian imports.
Republicans voted down the supplemental yesterday because of disputes about immigration at the U.S. border, but there appears to be bipartisan support for that uranium money.
- Congress already offered up $700 million for HALEU in the IRA, and the House GOP's energy-water approps bill would dole out billions more for enriched uranium.
- "If this is additional dollars, I certainly think Republicans will be warm to that," Rep. Chuck Fleischmann told Axios.
The intrigue: There's also bipartisan chatter on both sides of the Hill about moving an NRC licensing overhaul package, even though it was left out of the NDAA.
- E&C this week moved its own bill, the Atomic Energy Advancement Act, which would slash licensing fees for advanced reactors and require NRC rulemaking to speed up the process.
- "A lot of the elements in there were what we had in ADVANCE, so we're excited about that," Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, the lead Senate sponsor, told Axios Thursday morning.
- Capito said she plans to sit down with her House counterparts "as soon as next week" to start formulating a compromise.
- She acknowledged that it's not going to get done before the end of the year. But we expect a real negotiation headed into the approps deadlines in early 2024.
