A recent summary of talking points by the Joe Biden administration’s Department of Energy did not mention nuclear power as part of the 46th President’s clean-energy policy, which has taken center stage in the early days of Biden’s term.
On the other hand, the messaging guidance from the DOE Office of Public Affairs, dated Feb. 3, did not explicitly preclude participation of nuclear power in the Biden energy plan.
Under Biden, DOE has pledged, through the agency’s national laboratories, “to pursue innovations in fields like battery storage, renewable energy, electric vehicles, carbon capture and more,” according to the memo.
The talking-points summary also mentions that DOE is creating two new offices: an Office of Energy Jobs, to “lead the effort to make sure jobs created as part of the clean energy revolution offer good wages, benefits, and worker protections;” and an Office of Energy Justice, which will work “at every level of the Department to address the disproportionate health, environmental, economic, and climate impacts on disadvantaged communities.”
The memo circulated the same day the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) to be Biden’s first secretary of energy. In her confirmation hearing, Granholm reiterated Biden’s opposition to building a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev.
Granhom also said the DOE should look to the Obama-era consent-based siting approach as it attempts to find new locations to safely store radioactive waste. Consent based siting essentially involves securing buy-in from local, county, tribal and state governments before building any nuclear waste facilities on their territory. Critics have said this is an unreasonably high barrier to entry, especially when Yucca is still legally designated as a civil-military nuclear-waste site.
