SUN VALLEY, IDAHO — Nuclear executives and officials were set to gather here for four days for the Nuclear Industry Council’s (NIC) ninth Advanced Reactors Summit.
The annual meeting “will continue its focus on showcasing technology developers and advancing solutions on the cost and deployment timeframe of advanced reactors,” NIC said on the event’s webpage, “as well as practical ideas and concepts that have the potential of significantly improving advanced reactor design, deployment, and operations.”
Among the scheduled speakers for the conference are some familiar faces in the civilian nuclear power space, such as Commissioner David Wright of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Krishna Singh, CEO of Holtec International. Rita Baranwal, who in January joined Westinghouse as the nuclear services company’s chief technology officer, was also set to attend.
Also scheduled to attend were executives from advanced nuclear companies, such as X-Energy CEO Clay Sell, and Tara Neider, project director for TerraPower’s Natrium demonstration reactor.
Some attendees were scheduled on Thursday to tour the nearby Idaho National Laboratorys’ Advanced Test Reactor.
The conference was set to begin only days after the Joe Biden administration released a fiscal year 2023 budget proposal that would keep funding for the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy about flat for the 12 months starting Oct. 1 — $1.67 bill compared with $1.65 billion in the omnibus appropriations bill passed in early March.