Members of the House and Senate this week kicked off formal negotiations for the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, but they will not consider a package of nuclear policy reforms along with the bill, media reported.
A spokesperson for Sen. Shelley Capito (R-W.Va.), the author of the reforms, confirmed Friday that they will not be part of the unified National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on which members of both chambers of Congress began working this week.
“Senator Capito is going to continue working to get the bipartisan ADVANCE Act, which is critical to America’s future as the world’s nuclear energy leader, signed into law,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.
Media including Politico reported Thursday that Capito’s reforms, originally a standalone bill called the ADVANCE Act, will not be part of the final NDAA. The Senate in July added the ADVANCE Act to its own version of the NDAA, an annual authorization bill that sets policy and spending limits for defense programs.
The ADVANCE Act was largely geared at making it easier to export U.S. nuclear technology, but it would also have extended federal liability limits for the nuclear industry and set new waste-reporting requirements for DOE.
Things had been looking grim for the proposed nuclear power reforms since they arrived in the House over the summer, Capito told attendees of an industry conference in early November. The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which also has jurisdiction over nuclear energy and nuclear waste, opposed including the reforms in the NDAA, Capito said.
The NDAA, like all authorization bills, is separate from the appropriations bills that actually provide money to federal agencies from the treasury.
Congress is not close to passing appropriations bills for the 2024 fiscal year that began Oct. 1, but lawmakers have kept the government open with a continuing resolution that extended 2023 budgets into January, in the case of DOE, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and some agencies, and February, in the case of the Department of Defense and other agencies.
