The Senate on Thursday cleared a hurdle to vote on a bill that would fund the Department of Energy’s planned jumpstart of a new commercial uranium refining industry.
Senators on Thursday voted 67-32 to end debate on the bill, clearing the way for a final floor vote that had not been scheduled as of Friday afternoon. The procedural vote went 67-32, with 17 Republican senators crossing the aisle to support the measure and one, Sen. Cynthia Lumis (R-Wyo.) sitting out the vote. The Senate recessed after the vote and was scheduled to return on Monday.
The bill has $2.7 billion to pay for DOE contracts that would grease the skids for big federal orders of high assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), plus about $150 million for the National Nuclear Security Administration to keep an eye on Ukrainian nuclear power plants in the middle of combat zones.
Both programs were well in the margins of the roughly $93.3 billion natural security supplemental appropriations bill, the centerpiece of which is some $60 billion in military aid for Ukraine, which Russia again invaded in early 2022.
HALEU is an energy-dense type of uranium enriched to 19.75% by mass of uranium-235: just below the international threshold for highly enriched uranium.
DOE wants to help industry commercialize reactor designs that need HALEU. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm has testified in Congress that the agency needs the $2-plus-billion in funding to wean U.S. utilities off of Russian uranium.
The measure senators advanced Thursday, and which faces steep opposition in the Republican-controlled House, is a stripped down version of a larger bill that failed Wednesday in the Senate by 50-49.
The first version of the bill included immigration control measures for the southern U.S. border with Mexico. Only four Republicans voted for that version, which was negotiated by members of both parties, and only four Democrats voted against it.
The bipartisan border-control bill lost support among Republicans after former President Donald Trump (R), the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination who made immigration the signature issue of his first campaign and term, came out against it.