Operators of financially-troubled nuclear power plants are out of time to apply for the first round of federal bailouts through the Department of Energy’s civil nuclear credits program.
Tuesday was 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 RadWaste 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 submitted a bid on DOE’s first round of awards. Pacific Gas & Electric, which runs California’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant, told RadWaste Monitor Wednesday that it had applied for a bailout Sep. 2.
A spokesperson for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), who has been a vocal proponent of restarting the recently-shuttered Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, did not return a request for comment by deadline Friday. Whitmer’s office has said that Lansing is looking for potential buyers and stakeholders to help bring the plant back online.
Utility Constellation Energy, which operates Illinois’s Byron and Dresden plants that narrowly escaped closure in 2021, did not return a request for comment by deadline Friday.
