A $1-trillion infrastructure bill with tax credits for financially-struggling nuclear power plants passed the Senate on a widely bipartisan vote Tuesday.
The infrastructure package cleared the Senate in 69-30 and now heads to the House, whose members were scheduled to return to Washington on Aug. 23 to vote on the measure. If the bill becomes law, roughly $6 billion in credits will be auctioned off to nuclear plants that post an annual net operating loss. The measure directs the Department of Energy to “establish a process” for evaluating bids.
The credits program would also give priority to nuclear plants that are fueled using uranium sourced in the U.S., the bill said.
With several nuclear plants scheduled to close this year and more in dire financial straits, the Joe Biden administration has faced pressure from some in Congress to staunch the bleeding. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) has been a prominent Democratic voice on the issue, telling Weapons Complex Morning Briefing last week that the federal government has to do “everything humanly possible” to keep plants open. Manchin also sent a letter to the Biden administration in April urging the White House to step in.
Prominent nuclear industry group the American Nuclear Society said in a statement Tuesday evening that it was pleased with the infrastructure bill and the proposed credits program.
On the defense side, a proposed amendment to the infrastructure bill that would have given the National Nuclear Security Administration around $770 million in funding to be used for plutonium pit production over the next five years failed on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon. The amendment also didn’t get into the massive budget resolution that passed early Wednesday morning. The proposal, sponsored by Sens. Sens. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), proposed $50 billion in spending for national defense infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the infrastructure bill also didn’t include any language about nuclear waste or spent fuel storage. The Biden administration requested $20 million for 2022 to help DOE find somewhere to build a federal interim storage repository. Those funds will be part of the annual discretionary appropriation for next fiscal year, which got a step closer to reality when the Senate around 4 a.m. Wednesday approved a $3.5-trillion budget resolution on a 50-49 party line. One Republican, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.C.), didn’t vote.
The resolution sets spending levels for appropriations bills that, for the most part, lawmakers have already written. In July, the full House and the Senate Appropriations Committee approved separate 2022 appropriations bills with the requested $20 million for DOE interim storage.
