The Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy program gets yet another boost in the President’s FY22 budget request despite its ballooning funding over the last two decades. For FY 2022, the DOE has requested $1.85 billion for the Office of Nuclear Energy, a 23% increase over last fiscal year’s enacted level.

Almost every program under the Office of Nuclear Energy gets a funding boost. Reactor Concepts RD&D, a program that has poured millions of dollars on expensive small modular reactors that may not reach commercialization in time to have meaningful climate impact, gets an additional $32 million, a 15% increases above FY22 enacted level. Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 2020, which was passed along with the FY21 Omnibus, requested $370 million, $120 million above FY21 enacted level. The budget for Versatile Test Reactor Project, a new R&D program established by DOE in FY21, is 222% above FY21 enacted level. What is even more alarming is that Congress has been funding DOE’s Nuclear Energy Office significantly above the requested level over the last four years. If the trend were to persist, the already bloated budget would receive an explosion of funding in FY22. Unfortunately for taxpayers, subprogram-level details of the budget are still not available. TCS will be following closely for additional budget justification, so stay tuned for more.