A bill to create a state nuclear agency could get a vote in the Kentucky state Senate as early as next week.
Senate Bill 198 on Thursday was sent to the state Senate’s Rules Committee, the final stop before the chamber floor. The measure would create a Kentucky Nuclear Energy Development Authority, a non-regulatory body “to support and facilitate the development of the nuclear energy ecosystem across the Commonwealth,” according to a bill summary posted online.
If the bill passes, the authority would be responsible, among other things, for “engag[ing] with United States Department of Energy National Laboratories and private companies to develop technologies to reprocess or recycle spent nuclear fuel,” the bill reads.
The authority would, if created, have 20 voting members and six non-voting members on its decision-making advisory board. Members would be drawn from the governor’s cabinet, electric utilities and cooperatives and the Tennessee Valley Authority, among other bodies, according to the bill text.
State legislators would be among the non-voting members, according to a floor amendment added to the bill on Thursday.
Kentucky’s legislative session began on Jan. 9. It may last as many as 60 days in an even-numbered year, according to the state’s constitution.
Although it refined uranium for nuclear weapons for years at the now-shuttered Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Kentucky has no nuclear power plants of its own. The commonwealth remains a predominantly coal-burning state, according to the state’s 2023 Kentucky Energy Profile. Some 76% of the state’s electricity came from coal in 2023, according to the report.
Until 2017, the state had effectively banned construction of nuclear power plants, and disposal of spent nuclear fuel, in its territory.
