Nuclear power plant operators looking to take advantage of a federal bailout scheme may have to wait a bit longer to apply for the program’s second funding round, according to a Department of Energy spokesperson.
DOE expects to release “application guidance” for the second round of its civil nuclear credits program in the first quarter of “calendar year 2023,” a spokesperson for the agency’s Grid Deployment Office told the Exchange Monitor via email Wednesday. The spokesperson declined to provide a more specific timeline.
The department had previously forecast that it would open applications for the second round of funding in January.
The roughly $6 billion civil nuclear credits program, funded under the November 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, is aimed at preventing the nation’s aging nuclear power fleet from shuttering early for economic reasons. According to law, DOE must give out credits under the program over a five year period, making for an annual average of about $1.2 billion.
DOE’s first funding round under the bailout scheme was restricted to nuclear power plants facing imminent closure due to net loss of operating revenue.
The agency in November awarded $1.1 billion — nearly the entirety of last year’s award — to California’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant. Operator PG&E had planned to shutter the facility by 2025 after Sacramento in 2018 announced that California would no longer allow nuclear power generation.
Under the upcoming second round, DOE said in draft guidelines published in September, nuclear plant operators who have not publicly announced intentions to shutter their facilities will now be eligible for a bailout, too.
So far, just one plant operator has said it would apply for federal funding — nuclear services company Holtec International, which owns the shuttered Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Covert, Mich. Holtec has said it would use nuclear credits to seek a willing buyer to bring the facility back online.
Opponents of the Holtec bid have said that such an application would run afoul of the civil nuclear credits program’s guidelines — a coalition of environmental groups argued in a January letter to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm that the program applies to “only currently operating commercial nuclear reactors.” Palisades has been offline since May.
Meanwhile, interest in a federal bailout among other nuclear plant operators has been lukewarm. Electric utility Duke Energy, which owns six nuclear plants, told the Exchange Monitor in December that the company had “no plans” to apply for a credit.
A spokesperson for utility Entergy, which operates another five plants, said at the time that the company would review its eligibility and respond “as it benefits our stakeholders.”
