Illustration: Tiffany Herring/Axios
The nuclear industry's next request to Congress involves reducing the risk of building reactors.
Why it matters: The steep cost challenges of building first-of-a-kind reactors remain a persistent hurdle — and threaten to derail plans to quickly build out AI-driven data centers.
- The industry's big policy wins last year, led by the bipartisan ADVANCE Act, focused on smoothing out licensing of advanced reactors.
Zoom in: Sen. Jim Risch plans to reintroduce legislation that would financially backstop risky nuclear projects, a spokesperson told Axios.
- The idea — a long-sought goal of an industry that has repeatedly faced cost overruns — "is very much a step in the right direction," said John Kotek, senior vice president at the Nuclear Energy Institute.
- The bill, which would provide $1.2 billion of federal cost-sharing for up to three projects, would help jump-start small modular reactor production, Kotek said.
Yes, but: Not all nuclear advocates may fully embrace the approach.
- Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, who chairs the energy-water appropriations panel, said he's still studying the idea behind the Risch bill.
- "The more prudent approach would be on the front end: Choose the designs that make more sense," Fleischmann told Axios.
- "I would much rather us pick the modalities that we know will work and are going to be cost-effective," he said.
Risch's bill, as introduced last year, also proposed to redirect money from the IRA and infrastructure law to help fund a "Nuclear Investment Accelerator" at the DOE Loan Programs Office.
- That could make Democrats hesitant to support it.
Zoom out: Alan Ahn, deputy director of nuclear policy for Third Way, said his group broadly supports the idea that the federal government should be "shouldering some of the risk in the scale-up of these technologies."
- "We've expressed reservations around how that bill is funded, the mechanisms around how the federal government actually takes on some of that risk," Ahn said.
- "A lot of these concerns are shared by folks that we're speaking to in Congress."
The big picture: Data center developers demanding carbon-free power also "have to shoulder their burden" of the risk of building reactors, Dan Lipman, a Westinghouse executive, told Axios.
- A willingness to use federal authorities to back nuclear is "getting a refresh in this administration," said Lipman, who met with White House officials this week.
Between the lines: Load growth gives lawmakers an opportunity to "embrace nuclear moving forward in a lot more sensible and modern way," Rep. Russell Fry told Axios.
- Fry said he got a "crash course" in nuclear as a state lawmaker serving on a select committee overseeing delays at V.C. Summer, a nuclear project using Westinghouse's AP1000s that pulled the plug in 2017.
- In January, the state's largest power provider announced it was seeking proposals to complete the reactor projects at V.C. Summer, citing rising demand for nuclear.
