The Department of Energy did not make an Aug. 29 target to announce the winner, or winners, of the second round of a federal bailouts to buoy financially ailing nuclear power plants.
“DOE has not yet made any announcements around Award Cycle 2,” a spokesperson for the agency’s Office of Grid Deployment wrote in an email. The spokesperson did not reply to questions about when DOE might make an award and how many companies applied for funding in round two.
Second-round applications were due May 31. DOE published the end-of-summer award target as part of a guidance issued in March. In the guidance, the agency hedged the award date slightly.
Congress created DOE’s Civilian Nuclear Credit program in 2021 as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the first of two big federal stimulus bills masterminded by the administration of President Joe Biden (D).
The bill authorized and appropriated $6 million in credits over five years for nuclear power plants that could not continue making electricity without a subsidy. In the first round of the program, the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California took home $1 billion in funding.
Awards under the civilian nuclear credit program are paid out over four years in roughly even chunks of money.
Diablo Canyon’s award is still not formalized, though DOE this summer took some steps in that direction.
