" 4 takeaways from Manchin energy hearing "
By Brian Dabbs | 02/03/2023
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Nuclear fuel supply
Barrasso urged DOE to repurpose a portion of a $6 billion nuclear bailout in the infrastructure law, known as the Civil Nuclear Credit program, to instead shore up uranium supply for U.S. nuclear producers. Currently, DOE is eyeing some of the funds to support struggling nuclear reactors, including the Diablo Canyon power plant in California (Energywire, Jan. 30).
On top of the $6 billion bailout, nuclear producers in the United States are also eligible for a production tax credit under the Inflation Reduction Act.
“The tax credit is more than sufficient to address the economic needs of the existing reactors,” said Barrasso. “These same reactors are now facing a new challenge, a different challenge, and that’s eliminating their dependence on Russian uranium.”
In 2021, U.S. uranium mines produced 21,000 pounds of uranium concentrate, an 88 percent decrease from 2019 production levels, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That year Russia supplied roughly one-seventh of all uranium purchased by U.S. producers.
Last Congress, Barrasso introduced bills to ban Russian uranium imports and to create a U.S. uranium reserve.
“We support both taking care of our existing reactors and we support a very robust, aggressive uranium strategy for low-enriched uranium and HALEU,” Turk said at the hearing, referring to the high-assay low-enriched uranium used in more advanced reactors.
It’s not clear whether DOE has the authority to repurpose funds from the Civil Nuclear Credit program. Matt Crozat, the executive director of policy development at the Nuclear Energy Institute, said the option was worth looking into.
“While we still think there’s going to be opportunities for the Civil Nuclear Credit program, we don’t know that all that funding will be necessary, and the importance of this fuel supply is such that we’ll be looking for options anywhere we can,” Crozat said. "
www.eenews.net/articles/...aways-from-manchin-energy-hearing/
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