The House should vote Sept. 27 on a bipartisan infrastructure bill that includes a cash injection for financially-struggling nuclear power plants, now that Democrats have resolved an intra-party logjam.
Party leadership settled on that date Tuesday after several days of negotiations with dissenting House Democrats who did not want to continue work on a partisan budget process before voting on the infrastructure bill. The group of nine holdouts, led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), settled for a promise to vote on the $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure package later. The Senate approved the infrastructure bill 69-30 vote on Aug. 10.
In the meantime, the budget process took another step forward Tuesday in the House, where lawmakers voted 220-212 on a party line to approve a $3.5-trillion federal budget resolution. The Senate advanced the partisan resolution about two weeks ago.
Congress now has to write a budget reconciliation bill that, because of Senate rules about budget measures, will not be subject to a filibuster.
If the bipartisan infrastructure measure passes the House floor, it will unlock roughly $6 billion in tax credits for nuclear plants. It would also give priority to plants that use fuel made from U.S. uranium. Bailout credits would be auctioned off by the Department of Energy to power plants that post a net operating loss. The bill leaves it to DOE to decide how to run the auctions.
Even if the bill’s tax credits become law, though, they will come too late for some embattled nuclear plants. The Byron and Dresden plants in Illinois will both close before the end of the year in the absence of state intervention, utility company Exelon announced Aug. 4. New York’s Indian Point Energy Center shuttered in April. Michigan’s Palisades plant is slated to shutdown next year.
As for the budget resolution, it would unlock around $20 million in fiscal 2022 funding for DOE to look into a federal interim storage facility for the nation’s spent nuclear fuel. Congressional appropriators have already written that funding into 2022 spending bills, versions of which have passed the full House and Senate Appropriations Committee on largely party line votes.
If Congress cannot wrap up the budget process by Oct. 1, lawmakers will have to pass a continuing resolution to keep budgets at the 2021 level at least temporarily.
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), one of the nine House Democrats that held up the budget vote, told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing after Tuesday’s vote that nuclear waste didn’t come up during infrastructure negotiations with party leadership.
Cuellar offered and subsequently retracted an amendment to the House’s energy and water budget during a markup July 16 that would have added language preventing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from licensing two commercial interim storage sites, one of which is planned for west Texas. He said at the time that he would work with House Appropriations Committee chair Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) and ranking member Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) on that issue.
The NRC has said it could license a commercial interim storage facility proposed for west Texas by an Orano-Waste Control Specialists team by September and a similar site proposed by Holtec International in southeastern New Mexico by January.
