As it prepares a second round of funding under a program aimed at propping up the aging U.S. nuclear fleet, the Department of Energy said in draft guidelines last week that the upcoming bailouts need not be limited to plants facing imminent closure.
The second round of DOE’s civil nuclear credits program “does not restrict eligibility to applicants who have publicly announced intentions to cease operations,” the agency said in draft guidelines published Sep. 30.
DOE plans to award its roughly $6 billion credits program, first made law as part of the Joe Biden administration’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in November 2021, over a five-year period at around $1.2 billion annually.
Under the first award cycle, which wrapped Sep. 6, nuclear plant operators seeking a bailout were required to provide DOE with proof that their facilities were scheduled for closure before November 2021.
The second round of funding, the new guidelines said, only requires applicants to provide a “narrative explanation, with supporting documentation,” assessing the likelihood that their plants could shut down during the remaining four years of the nuclear credits program.
Friday’s guidelines also shifts the bailout’s award period to a calendar-year basis from a fiscal-year basis to align the program with a nuclear production tax credit made law under the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law in August.
As of Friday, DOE had not listed a submission deadline for the second round of credits, and the field for such information had been left blank on the agency’s draft guidelines.
Meanwhile, members of the public wishing to provide input on the draft guidelines have until Nov. 4 to do so, DOE said in a Friday press release.
As of Friday, the department had yet to announce awardees for the first round of bailouts. DOE has said that it would notify recipients with a conditional offer within 30 days of the submission deadline, putting such an announcement at Oct. 6 or so.
An agency spokesperson told RadWaste Monitor Thursday that it was aiming to get awards out “as soon as possible.”
So far, just two nuclear plant operators have said they applied for a DOE bailout: Pacific Gas & Electric, which runs California’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant; and decommissioning company Holtec International, which owns the recently-closed Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan.
