Sen. Shelley Capito (R-W.Va.) on Friday urged Congress to pass her package of nuclear energy reforms, which were stripped this week from a must-pass defense bill as competing House reforms advanced.
“If the United States wants to get serious about our long-term energy security and our environmental goals, nuclear energy is the clear answer. Passing the ADVANCE [Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy] Act into law is the obvious next step,” Capito wrote in a joint opinion piece with Miss America 2023 Grace Stanke, and Chris Barnard, president of the American Conservation Coalition.
The op-ed, published on foxnews.com and distributed by Capito’s office, was published two days after a bicameral conference committee released a compromise version of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that confirmed what was widely reported last week: the ADVANCE Act would not get to hitch a ride on the annual defense policy bill.
The same day the text of the 2024 NDAA hit the street, the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved its own large package of nuclear energy reforms, which at 84 pages is roughly as long as the ADVANCE Act and touches on many of the same subjects.
At deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor, the Energy and Commerce Committee’s bills had not been scheduled for debate in the House Rules Committee, which sets the terms of floor debate in the lower chamber. The Energy and Commerce Committee, Capito said in early November, led the opposition to the ADVANCE Act as an NDAA rider.
Meanwhile, NDAA negotiators also threw out a House proposal that would have made it the sense of Congress that the military should use advanced nuclear reactors, though they did direct the secretary of defense to brief Congress by March 1 about “each of the military departments’ current efforts regarding advanced nuclear technology,” and whether any obstacles remain to deploying it.
The final NDAA, which still must be approved by the House and Senate, also requires the director of national intelligence to examine whether U.S. intelligence agencies should use nuclear energy. The director, a cabinet-level official in the Joe Biden administration, would have to deliver a classified report to Congress 180 days after the bill becomes law.