A Senate committee unanimously voted Wednesday to ban imports of Russian uranium and to require a report from the Department of Energy about the cost of a federal bailout for struggling nuclear power plants.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved the ban and the report as part of S. 452, the Nuclear Fuel Security Act of 2023. The bill passed the committee by voice vote and now heads to the Senate floor.
The measure originally did not include a ban on Russian uranium, something for which co-sponsor Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) has advocated for a long time. Wyoming has deposits of natural uranium.
The ban would go into effect 90 days after the bill becomes law.
The measure now must pass the full Senate, which had not scheduled a vote or offered the legislation for unanimous consent by its members. The latter is the most common way legislation moves through the oft-deadlocked Senate, where Democrats have only a 51-49 majority, assuming all three independents who caucus with them, and the sometimes-swing-voting Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), vote with them.
Manchin, chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, was the lead cosponsor on the bill and also helped draft the amendment to it that would ban Russian uranium. Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) were cosponsors on the amendment and the underlying bill.
The Senate committee’s bill was the second in a one-two legislative punch this week in which members of Congress voted to ban imports of Russian uranium. The Senate’s bill goes further than the House Energy and Natural Resources energy, climate and grid security subcommittee did on Tuesday.
In what was technically a bipartisan vote, the House subcommittee on Tuesday advanced to the full committee a bill that would cut off imports of Russian uranium by 2028.
Aside from the uranium ban, the bill would require the Department of Energy to create a “nuclear fuel security program” that will “increase the quantity of LEU [low enriched uranium] and HALEU [high assay low enriched uranium] produced by U.S. nuclear energy companies.” Some advanced reactors, which DOE hopes to develop and commercialize, require HALEU. The agency is already attempting to create a domestic supply of the material.
Meanwhile, the bill also requires DOE to report, by 180 days after the measure becomes law, on the cost of implementing the civil nuclear credit program, a $6-billion bailout authorized over five years in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2022.
Diablo Canyon in California was the first, and so far, only, recipient of civilian nuclear credits, netting more than $1 billion from DOE in 2022 under the program. Paired with a substantial state bailout from the state, the facility in Avila Beach, Calif., now plans to keep its two reactors online about five years longer than planned, until 2030 or so.
