DOE’s $900M funding infusion for small reactors includes offer of NNSA aid

The Department of Energy’s $900-million solicitation for proposals to deploy small light-water reactors includes an “opportunity” for nuclear security aid that, the agency said, could make the reactors more exportable.

DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations dropped the long-expected solicitation on Thursday, offering domestic teams of power consumers, utilities, reactor designers and construction contractors a chance to nab some of the money set aside for new nuclear development by 2021’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act: the Joe Biden (D) administration’s signature legislation.

The funding comes parceled with what DOE in the solicitation called an “opportunity,” not a requirement, for teams looking to deploy Gen III+ small modular reactors “to work with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to incorporate safeguards and security by design into the projects.”

Teams must have a utility partner to apply for the funding.

DOE planned a webinar about the solicitation on Oct. 22. There are two tiers of funding. The largest, with $800 million, is reserved for teams with a utility partner. DOE plans two awards under this tier, according to solicitation. Funding will be distributed over three to 10 years under other transaction agreements.

Getting the NNSA’s help, which involves making reactors and their fuel resistant to tampering by bad actors who want to weaponize them, positions a team’s offering “not only as a market leader but also as an ‘exportable product’ that is compliant with international legal agreements, deployment-ready, scalable, and competitive on a global scale,” DOE wrote in its solicitation.

Awardees who accept the opportunity for NNSA aid would be working with “a team in NNSA’s Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation,” an agency spokesperson wrote Friday in an email.

DOE in its solicitation defined a Gen III+ small modular reactor as, among other things, a fission reactor with a power output between 50 megawatts and 350 megawatts that uses light water coolant and low-enriched uranium fuel. 

Among the companies working on reactors that meet the definition in the solicitation are: GE-Hitachi, Wilmington, N.C.; Holtec, Jupiter, Fla.; NuScale, Corvallis, Ore.; and Westinghouse Electric Co., Cranberry Township, Pa. Not all are majority U.S.-owned.

“Next-generation nuclear energy will play an important role in building the clean power sector of the future,” John Podesta, senior advisor to the President for international climate policy, said in a DOE press release announcing the solicitation. “Today’s funding will boost American innovation, bolster our national security, and tackle the climate crisis.”