The Department of Energy is planning to open up its second round of bailouts for economically-troubled nuclear power plants in the new year, an agency spokesperson said this week.
DOE is preparing its next round of funding under its roughly $6 billion civil nuclear credits program, greenlit in November 2021 under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. A spokesperson told RadWaste Monitor via email Tuesday that the department “anticipate[s] launching the next award cycle in January 2023.”
Under its first funding cycle, DOE only accepted applications from nuclear plants facing imminent closure. The agency Nov. 21 awarded around $1.1 billion to California’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant, substantially all of the funding available in that cycle.
This time, however, DOE will not “restrict eligibility to applicants who have publicly announced intentions to cease operations,” the agency said in draft guidelines for the award published in late September.
According to law, DOE must spread its $6 billion in credits over a five-year period, which averages out to around $1.2 billion annually. The agency in September shifted the program’s award period to a calendar-year basis from a government fiscal-year basis, a move aimed at aligning the program with a nuclear production tax credit made law under August’s Inflation Reduction Act.
Meanwhile, it remains unclear how many nuclear plant operators will actually apply for DOE’s second round of credits. A spokesperson for Duke Energy, which runs six nuclear power plants, told RadWaste Monitor via email Friday that the utility’s fleet “continues to perform well” and that it has “no plans” to apply for a bailout.
A spokesperson for the Tennessee Valley Authority, the federally-owned utility that operates three nuclear facilities, told RadWaste Monitor via email Friday that the company does not qualify for DOE’s program.
A spokesperson for Entergy, which owns another five of the nation’s nuclear plants, did not respond to a request for comment by deadline Friday.
After Palisades Nuclear Generating Station operator Holtec International was denied an award in November, the company told RadWaste Monitor last week that its focus was now on decommissioning the Covert, Mich., facility.
