Operators of financially-troubled nuclear power plants are about out of time to apply for the first round of federal bailouts through the Department of Energy’s civil nuclear credits program.
Tuesday is the deadline for the first $1.2 billion funding cycle under DOE’s nuclear credits program, unveiled as part of the White House’s November bipartisan infrastructure bill. The agency will award around $6 billion in total bailouts to nuclear power plants over the course of five years.
DOE has said that awardees will be notified within 30 days of the submissions deadline. However, the agency told Exchange Monitor in August that “the timing will ultimately depend on the number of applications received” and whether additional information will be required from awardees.
DOE has said that it plans to publicly disclose information about conditional awards, along with information about the amount of credit allocated and the average dollar-per-megawatt-hour credit price.
At least one nuclear plant operator has said that it would bid on DOE’s first round of awards. Pacific Gas & Electric, which runs California’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant, told Exchange Monitor in July that it would seek a credit “to “reduce costs for our customers.”
