On Thursday, April 28^th the House Appropriations Committee – Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies Subcommittee held a hearing on the FY2023 Budget Request for the Department of Energy (DOE) with Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm.

At the time of the hearing, DOE still had not released all of its budget justification documents accompanying the President’s Budget for FY2023, which was released a month prior. The delay and lack of transparency undermines effective oversight of the agency. Both Chairwoman Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and Ranking Member Mike Simpson (R-ID) echoed the same sentiment in their opening remarks. “Let me express my disappointment that one month after the Administration’s budget was released – we have not received a full set of the required supporting budget materials. This must be rectified promptly and for future years,” said Chairwoman Kaptur.

The hearing touched on many issues including critical minerals, hydrogen, solar panel costs, U.S. energy security, etc., but nuclear energy was front and center of the discussion. Secretary Granholm highlighted in her testimony that DOE recently started accepting applications for the $6 billion Civil Nuclear Credit program established by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). The first award cycle will go towards nuclear reactors that had already publicly announced their retirement before FY2026. That is, more taxpayer money will go towards failing nuclear facilities that can’t compete in the market despite being subsidized every step of the way.

Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) were also raised during the hearing. Pitched as mini nuclear reactors that will save the failing nuclear industry and the climate, SMRs did not live up to any of those expectations. SMRs take years to design and demonstrate, leave behind toxic waste, and like larger traditional reactors, are not cost competitive against renewable energy generation. To date, DOE has spent more than $1.2 billion on SMRs, which resulted in only one design certification—the NuScale SMR—and the agency plans to hand out $5.5 billion more on research and demonstration over the next decade.

According to some lawmakers, spending billions of taxpayer dollars on SMRs is not enough. Rep. Simpson raised concerns about the lack of funding for ongoing demonstration activities within the Advanced Small Modular Reactor program.

“The first ever NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) approved SMR design…there is a western utility signed up to deliver this reactor,” Simpson said, referring to the Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP), a six-reactor plant to be built in Idaho using NuScale’s design. He added, “…there has also been international interest in this SMR. I intend to work once again to add funding to this important demonstration project.”

The DOE requested $40 million for Advanced SMR RD&D program for FY2023, which will be used to finalize support for the ongoing NuScale SMR Demonstration Readiness project. Moreover, DOE announced a multi-year $1.4 billion award for the CFPP plant in October 2020. At the time, CFPP was designed to be a 12-reactor, 720MWe plant but was voted to be downsized to a 6-reactor, 462 Mwe plant in June 2021. Despite the decreased capacity and $1.4 billion subsidy from DOE, the Utah utility collective behind the CFPP is still struggling to get its members to subscribe to just a quarter of the plant’s output. Given the industry’s history of cost overruns, construction delays, safety issues, etc., utilities and municipalities are reluctant to be locked into a nuclear project that could expose their ratepayers to more risks.

Congress needs to take critical action to limit the extent of climate crisis. But given the costs and inefficiencies of nuclear energy despite the generous, never-ending flow of taxpayer money, spending more on nuclear could crowd out other faster, cheaper sources of low emission energy. We can’t spend our way to nuclear success unless the industry figure out how to stand on its own two feet.