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This brief provides an overview of recent events that have taken place in the advanced reactor ecosystem, as of June 2024, with a focus on advanced reactor opportunities, deployment needs, and progress that has been made with respect to the following topics: licensing and regulation, federal legislation and fuel availability, industrial decarbonization, exports, early mover project risk sharing, and hydrogen production.

This report summarizes insights from a series of workshops conducted by The Nuclear Innovation Alliance (NIA) under Chatham House rules in 2023 and early 2024 to identify the factors inhibiting commitments to advanced nuclear energy projects and potential steps to accelerate such commitments. Through these workshops, we found that key factors holding back further commitments include the uncertainty in the ultimate project cost and the long and expensive development process for nuclear energy projects, including licensing. We identified potential actions by private-sector actors, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and Congress to accelerate commitments to additional advanced nuclear energy projects by reducing and sharing risks facing early mover projects. 

To view NIA's press statement regarding the publication of this paper, click here.  

This NIA Fact Sheet highlights the deployment timeline of selected advanced reactors projects.

Last updated August 2024

NIA Research Director Patrick White presented an American Nuclear Society, Community of Practice Webinar on "Next Steps on 10 CFR Part 53: Updates on Developing a New Regulatory Framework for Advanced Reactors."

The webinar provided a history of nuclear regulation in the United States, the development process for 10 CFR Part 53, and updates on the current status and next steps for the new regulatory framework for advanced reactors. 

The presentation slides can be found here.

This letter expresses NIA’s support of President Biden’s nomination of U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chair Christopher T. Hanson to another five-year term and urges the Senate to move swiftly to confirm his nomination.

These comments were submitted by the U.S.‐based members of the Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative (NHI) including the Nuclear Innovation Alliance.  Our comments underscore the importance of ensuring that nuclear energy plays a meaningful role in hydrogen production. Not only does this clearly reflect Congressional intent in both IRA and IIJA clean hydrogen programs, but we believe that a large‐scale clean hydrogen market will not exist without nuclear‐produced hydrogen. To address this issue, our comments propose several additional pathways for existing nuclear facilities to qualify for the 45V tax credit. 

This report reviews the current licensing process for new nuclear power plants at the NRC and concludes that it is unlikely the agency could reasonably scale existing licensing processes as they are currently implemented to meet the potential future high volume licensing demand (tens to hundreds of new reactors per year) to meet mid-century climate goals. It also identifies major licensing processes that most significantly constrain NRC licensing capacity limitations relevant to future high volume licensing. Finally, it presents three specific proposals that aim to enable high volume licensing of advanced nuclear energy by the NRC in the long term.

To view NIA's press statement regarding the publication of this paper, click here. 

This report by NIA provides new technical analyses of high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU) production cost and the funding requirements for federal programs to support HALEU availability for advanced reactors. The production cost analyses highlight and quantify the role of different cost drivers (including both existing uranium mining, conversion, and enrichment capacity as well as new HALEU enrichment and deconversion capacity) in the cost of domestic HALEU production. These production cost-drivers are the starting point for commercial and government efforts to catalyze domestic HALEU production. The federal HALEU availability program evaluations we present characterize the Congressional appropriation needs to catalyze private investment new HALEU production capacity under a wide range of market conditions. These detailed program evaluations reinforce on-going work by Congress to secure additional legislative authorizations and appropriations for domestic HALEU production. This report provides a strong technical, economic, and policy basis for on-going efforts by Congress, the Biden Administration, and the U.S. Department of Energy to catalyze new domestic commercial production of HALEU for advanced reactors.

To see this report's summary for policymakers that focuses on the full report’s high-level policy takeaways, click here. 

This summary for policymakers provides high-level policy takeaways from NIA's report, "Characterizing an Emerging Market for High-Assay, Low-Enriched Uranium Production". This report by NIA provides new technical analyses of high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU) production cost and the funding requirements for federal programs to support HALEU availability for advanced reactors. To read the full report, click here. 

This 2023 update of the Guide incorporates new information since the initial 2021 release.

This Guide serves as an introduction to advanced nuclear energy technologies and policies for state-level policymakers and stakeholders. The first part of this Guide describes advanced reactor technology and its benefits, provides an overview of enabling federal policies, and reviews state options to incentivize local development of advanced reactors. The second part of the Brief provides case studies of emerging state leaders in these technologies:     

• nuclear projects in Wyoming
• Energy Northwest’s plans in Washington State
• the state of play in Virginia and the Virginia Nuclear Energy Consortium
• Texas’ leadership in deploying advanced nuclear energy
• the Nuclear Alternative Project in Puerto Rico

Finally, the last section of this Brief is a compendium of topical briefs that elaborate the characteristics of advanced reactors with respect to safety, economic benefits, waste management, the flexibility and dispatchability of advanced nuclear power, its timing and development. These briefs also include one-pagers on key provisions found in the IRA to spur nuclear innovation.