The FY2023 President’s Budget requests $1.675 billion for Department of Energy (DOE)’s Nuclear Energy office, which is almost double the $889 million appropriated 10 years ago in FY2014. This ballooning budget was dwarfed by the $2.5 billion by the infrastructure package (P.L.117-58, aka Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act) last November on the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP) authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 2020.

DOE requests another $230 million for ARDP in FY2023. The effort funnels money to small modular reactors (SMRs), which as we noted in a detailed report last year, are a bad bet for taxpayers.

As part of the effort to develop advanced reactors that will require High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) fuel, DOE requests $422 million for Fuel Cycle Research and Development, a 32% increase compared to the FY2022 funding level.

Although the FY2023 budget request for Nuclear Energy stayed flat compared to the FY2022 enacted level, make no mistake about the suite of subsidies nuclear energy receives. Apart from DOE nuclear R&D money, the nuclear industry also receives embedded subsidies up and down the supply chain, including foregone royalties on uranium from federal lands, loan guarantees for new construction, covered liabilities for accidents, eventual nuclear waste repository management, access to federal facilities, tax credits etc. The infrastructure package also appropriated $6 billion in credits to bail out  failing nuclear facilities, yet the Senate is considering giving out the same credits AGAIN.