U.S. DOE to Follow Industry Lead In Setting Priorities Under Trump
R. Shane Johnson recently briefed representatives of the U.S. nuclear power industry about the the strategies and programs that the Department of Energy (DOE) is developing to implement the Trump Administration’s vision for nuclear energy.
Johnson is the Deputy Assistant Secretary in the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy. He’s the senior career civil servant in that branch, which has an annual budget of less than $1 B out of the Department’s $27 B annual budget..
Johnson began his talk with the bottom line.
“The government of the United States in the realm of nuclear energy is asking, looking and expecting the industry to lead where the government goes.
That’s kind of the bottom line in terms of the government, in terms of the Department of Energy as we move forward over the next few years. So that’s the bottom line.
If you take anything else away from what I say that deviates from that, I apologize.
But the bottom line is we’re within a time when there has been the realization of those who live and work in the swamp that the government doesn’t have all the answers and that the way out in terms of the nuclear industry is the industry itself.”
Support from bully pulpit
Johnson followed that charge to the industry by reminding the audience that there have been many good words said about nuclear energy during the past six months, and backed that statement up with a slide displaying strongly positive quotes from both the President and the Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
Trump: “We will begin to revive and expand our nuclear energy sector…which produces clean, renewable and emissions-free energy. A complete review of U.S. nuclear energy policy will help us find new ways to revitalize this crucial energy resource.”
Sec. Perry: “If you really care about this environment that we live in…then you need to be a supporter of this [nuclear energy] amazingly clean, resilient, safe, reliable source of energy.”
Johnson showed a graph that displayed three divergent lines. Of the first two, one projected a rapidly disappearing nuclear reactor fleet with about 70 units in operation in 2030, and the second a leveling off at 93 units in 2025, after implementing the already announced closures.
But the third, labeled “Improved Regulatory Environment and Market,” depicted growth to 103 units operating in 2025 and a sharply rising line after that point labeled “Deployment of Advanced Reactors.”
The graph stopped at 2030 with a prediction for the final scenario of 117 units producing just under 20% of U.S. electricity but the slope indicated accelerating growth.
Helping established industry help itself
What the Energy Department plans to do, to help the nuclear industry help itself, is remove regulatory roadblocks, reforming the market by leveling the playing field and working closely with states, and improving financial tools like the Ex-Im Bank and public/private partnerships.
DOE’s priorities include stabilizing and expanding the nuclear fleet, establishing an advanced reactor pipeline and re-establishing the national fuel cycle infrastructure.
Johnson said the department will continue investing in the LWR sustainability and accident tolerant fuels programs. It will support advanced light water and non light water reactor development, expand the GAIN (Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear) program and fund fuel cycle R&D, including disposition.
Advanced technology support
Under current leadership, the definition of advanced reactor is any reactor that has not yet been commercially deployed, a change from the previous administration.
The DOE official stated that the underlying reason for the revision was a desire to reduce in infighting and to unify currently separated groups of people who all share a common goal of producing better nuclear energy products.
In implementing its support of innovation and advanced reactors, the DOE is developing a new funding opportunity announcement (FOA) that will be less prescriptive than recent FOAs in terms of eligible technology paths.
The notional structure for the FOA shows three separate funding levels: projects with budgets under $1 million, projects with budgets between $1 million and $10 million and projects with budgets from $10 million to $100 million.
As the DOE funding level increases, so does the share of matching private sector funding. Small, early stage projects with work performed by DOE labs or requiring more than one meeting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission might not require any specific private funding match. Large projects like getting a design certification might require a 50/50 cost share. He did not announce an issue date for the FOA.
Nuclear construction support
During the Q&A session an audience member asked if there was any discussion in Washington about ways to help the 5,000 people who were fired with little or no notice when the owners of the V.C. Summer expansion project announced they were stopping work.
Johnson said he was not aware of any such discussions, but reminded the audience that did not mean they were not any taking place. He asked the questioner for contact information so that he could find out more and provide follow-up information. Later, the DOE official told a small group, including Fuel Cycle Week, that he understood the question to be mostly about immediate human resources issues.
Those issues are outside of the responsibilities assigned to the Department of Energy. The federal government has other agencies tasked to respond to human resources concerns so Johnson wouldn’t expect to have been included in any meetings they might have held.
A member of the group stated that the best way to help the workers—and improve the future of the U.S. nuclear industry— was to enable the project to move forward to completion.
Johnson agreed and indicated that there were discussions on that topic in progress. He was reminded that the clock was already ticking and that loss of quality assurance control for a nuclear facility would require a time-consuming and expensive recovery effort.
Note: A version of the above was first published by Fuel Cycle Week in edition #715. It is republished here with permission.
Rod – thanks, as always, for this post and the excellent reporting. I hope that nuclear related businesses and associations get on the ball and work out some details of what a good regulatory and support framework should be, and then get cracking on finding Federal and State political supporters. I am only a Canadian, looking on, I agree that businesses and groups have been entirely too passive in the face of opposition to nuclear power.
One aspect of the thoughts here and in the previous post really bothers me. It is the use of the word THE in describing options and choices. That tends to make people think there is only one possibility for growth, or one option besides the current path. But the work on advanced reactors, especially factory manufactured modular reactors and heat batteries, opens up many paths and alternatives. I sincerely hope that all the innovators, the Transatomics and Thorcons, will not be forgotten in regulation proposals and in funding.
I sincerely hope that the State and Federal governments will declare and put regulation and legislation behind nuclear fission as a desirable minimum impact, zero CO2 emission, and fully dispatchable heat and power source.
“An audience member” and “a member of the group” showed talent for cutting to the chase. Didn’t catch their name, did you? 🙂
This is good news.
“What the Energy Department plans to do, to help the nuclear industry help itself, is remove regulatory roadblocks”
I assume that this statement only applies to removing regulatory roadblocks controlled by the DOE. Am I correct? Was there any discussion about re-thinking our current regulatory structure from the ground up?
It would be especially good to suggest regulatory reform that would enable a practical form of plant mothballing. Or a streamlined method of bringing old plants back on line.
Has always seemed strange that plants can set 80-90% constructed for 30-40 years and then get approval to startup. However, the NRC will not allow a plant to be placed in the same “mothball” status for and restarted even as soon as a day after accepting the letter from a plant to cease operation. Any that were restarted would have to go through a restart test like TMI-I did after the accident at unit II which proved the plant was ready to restart. Some rather major modifications were made during that long delayed startup, e.g., all SG Tubes were re-sealed to the tube-plate due to a newly discovered form of stress induced cracking of the previously used tube seal method.
“However, the NRC will not allow a plant to be placed in the same “mothball” status for and restarted even as soon as a day after accepting the letter from a plant to cease operation.”
That was a very good point. Forcing a billion dollar facility to shut down with no middle ground to resume operations in the future is a big waste of resources for our country. What can be the possible rationale for this? This does not apply to other industrial facilities. Old mines can resume operation as soon as the price of the ore goes back up. Ships can be mothballed for future operation. Many other examples.
In seem to remember a fellow telling me that radical anti nukes forced Maine Yankee’s reactor to be physically cut up to prevent future operation.
Exactly.
I read a recent article where a utility exec was quoted as saying that you can shut coal and gas plants down, and then fire them back up when market conditions change, but once you close a nuclear plant, you can’t start it back up.
My reaction being the simple question, “why.” Nuclear exceptionalism must end.
I would love to see NRC try to conclusively demonstrate that a reopened nuclear plant (w/o going through any of those excessive hoops) would actually be a greater public health risk than a coal plant. Hell, I’m still trying to understand why Crystal River is not allowed to operate in its current condition (i.e., with a “compromised” shield building) but the four old, dirty coal plants at the same location are allowed to continue to operate. Look me in the eye, NRC, and tell me that Crystal River would be worse than those coal plants. Better yet, prove it to me with rigorous analyses.
This is one of my ideas for a NRC petition, i.e., that NRC be required to consider the whole picture (in terms of minimizing public health risks) and not be allowed to focus solely on reducing nuclear risks. Being more risky/harmful than a coal plant *should* be the standard for forcing the closure of a nuclear plant.
Thanks for the update Rod!