A House committee on Tuesday sent two nuclear energy bills to the floor, one with workplace reforms for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and another to encourage domestic production of uranium fuel.
The first bill approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the Atomic Energy Advancement Act, rolls up a number of smaller legislative proposals approved this fall by the energy, climate and grid security subcommittee. It passed overwhelmingly with bipartisan support, with only two “no” votes.
That gets the House a step closer to negotiating with the Senate after a package of nuclear reforms approved by the upper chamber was stripped from the annual National Defense Authorization Act last week after objections from the lower-chamber’s Energy and Commerce Committee.
The Atomic Energy Advancement Act would, among other things:
- Extend Price-Anderson liability caps for nuclear reactor operators for 40 years to Dec. 31, 2065.
- Change the law to require that the NRC’s licensing of nuclear power plants “does not unnecessarily limit” either “the potential of nuclear energy to improve the general welfare” or “the benefits of nuclear energy technology to society.”
- Allow the NRC commissioner to appoint qualified people to temporary jobs with four-year terms and to broadly address insufficient employee compensation at the civilian nuclear regulator.
- Require the Department of Energy, within one year of the bill’s passage, to study the global civilian nuclear industry and tell Congress how U.S. allies are deploying or planning to deploy nuclear energy.
The second bill, the Nuclear Fuel Security Act of 2023, would require the secretary of energy to create a “Nuclear Fuel Security Program” to support more domestic production of low-enriched uranium and high assay low-enriched uranium, a more energy-dense type of nuclear-reactor fuel.
