The Department of Energy may notify the first awardees in its multi-billion-dollar nuclear plant bailout in early fall, an agency spokesperson said this week.
DOE, which stopped accepting applications Sep. 6 for its roughly $6 billion civil nuclear credits program, “will announce any conditional awards as soon as 30 days after the deadline,” an agency spokesperson told RadWaste Monitor via email Tuesday.
That timeline puts the department’s first announcements about credit recipients in mid-October, or around Oct. 6.
Along with information about conditional awards, DOE has said that it should also publish information about the amount of credit allocated and the average dollar-per-megawatt-hour credit price.
So far, at least two nuclear plant operators are on DOE’s list for a bailout. Holtec International, which currently owns Michigan’s recently-shuttered Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, has said that it applied for a credit late last week with the intention of restarting the plant. In California, Diablo Canyon Power Plant operator Pacific Gas & Electric is also seeking a bailout.
Under the civil nuclear credits program, unveiled in November as part of the White House’s bipartisan infrastructure package, DOE plans to deal out its awards in $1.2 billion increments over the next five years. As of Friday, the deadline for the agency’s next funding cycle had yet to be announced.
