New law sets up a nuclear power renaissance
The ADVANCE Act positions the U.S. nuclear energy sector to expand at a pace not seen for decades. Read More

It just got a whole lot easier to build a nuclear power plant.
Or at least, that’s the hope behind the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law July 9.
The act represents a major regulatory shift from the institutional neglect of the last few decades.
Until the summer of 2023, when the Vogtle 3 nuclear reactor came online, the U.S. had not built a new commercial nuclear plant in over two decades. It was followed by Vogtle 4 in March. Even so, the Vogtle projects were years late and billions of dollars over budget.
“This is an agency that basically regulated a pretty static and shrinking industry,” said Doug True, chief nuclear officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute, “so efficiency wasn’t part of their culture.”
But in December, the U.S. — along with 24 other countries — signed a “Declaration to Triple Nuclear Energy” globally by 2050. The Biden administration also made it a goal to have the U.S. electricity grid reach net-zero by 2035. Nuclear power emits no carbon dioxide.
The ADVANCE Act requires the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to accelerate the licensing and deployment of new reactors. It streamlines the NRC’s management of existing and future nuclear reactors and requires the agency to create a new, streamlined licensing process within 18 months.
“Congress has made it very clear that the NRC needs to focus on becoming efficient,” said True. “So this is not about shortcutting. It’s about taking the bureaucracy out of the process.”
The U.S. currently has 54 operating nuclear power plants generating almost 20 percent of the country’s electricity. Before ADVANCE passed, if anyone wanted to add to that fleet they had to wait for the permitting process to occur and officially finish before they could move forward with a project. As a result, new projects stayed on hold indefinitely.
“[The ADVANCE Act] seeks to streamline the regulatory processes and reduce the barriers to innovation, enabling faster deployment of advanced nuclear reactors,” said Jay Yu, founder and executive chairman of NANO Nuclear Energy in a press release.
The impact of the ADVANCE Act won’t be felt immediately, according to Doug Vine, director of energy analysis at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, but that doesn’t mean the nuclear reactor marketplace will stand still.
“New utilities and new companies … should be more proactive, more iterative in their work with the [NRC],” said Vine, encouraging these companies to “signal the level of demand” for nuclear energy.
Vine emphasized that nuclear energy tax credits created by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) are subject to an ever-tightening set of deadlines. The IRA established different credits that are available for projects that will be placed in service from Dec. 31 to 2032. The credits also expire if the emissions from the power sector decline to 75 percent of the level in 2022, regardless of the year.
The ADVANCE Act acknowledges this time crunch with a competition for the first reactor to receive a license. Details aren’t yet finalized, but the Department of Energy said that the potential compensation could include “the total costs assessed by the NRC for first movers in a variety of areas.”
The DOE also recently made $2.7 billion available to develop a domestic uranium marketplace, ensuring the nuclear sector has a steady stream of fuel on hand.
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