Nuclear energy gets much-needed boost

Opinion editor’s note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes a mix of national and local commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

President Joe Biden, as you’ve no doubt heard, has had a rough few weeks. Yet he signed a bill into law that could well prove transformative for America’s energy future. Here’s hoping — whatever happens in November’s election — that more progress lies ahead.

Known as the Advance Act, the bill seeks to remedy some longstanding flaws in nuclear-energy regulation. To reach net zero, the world will need to roughly double its nuclear capacity by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency. Yet constructing new nuclear plants in the U.S. is expensive, time-consuming and encumbered by red tape. Partly as a result, the industry has stagnated: The share of electricity generated by nuclear is projected to decline to about 12% by 2050, from about 18% today.

The Advance Act should help reverse that trend. As a start, it makes useful reforms to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, allowing the agency to hire more staff, reduce licensing fees, speed application processing and ease the burden of environmental reviews. It also makes a small but consequential change to the commission’s mission, requiring it — after decades of focusing on potential threats — to also consider the vast public benefits of nuclear energy when making regulatory decisions.

The bill could be especially helpful for advanced reactor designs. Small modular reactors have a lot of potential: They’re likely to be cheaper and easier to build, more flexible and safer than traditional plants, while providing reliable energy for both electricity and industrial uses. Scores of iterations are under development. So far, though, these businesses have faced significant licensing barriers, partly because the rules were written with conventional reactors in mind. In addition to streamlining that process, the bill offers prizes for the first companies that meet specified benchmarks. Combined with tax credits contained in the Inflation Reduction Act, this should set the stage for real progress.

Several other provisions could in aggregate prove significant. One would ease the conversion of retired fossil-fuel plants into nuclear facilities, which should both reduce costs and help areas that might otherwise lose out during the energy transition. Another will facilitate the export of nuclear technology to global markets, which will likely have both commercial and diplomatic benefits. Other provisions aim to boost workforce development, ease supply-chain issues and encourage safer fuels.

Finally, the bill should spur development of nuclear fusion, an embryonic but potentially game-changing industry. With dozens of startups hoping to commercialize various fusion designs, the bill affirms that such reactors — which are inherently safe — won’t be subject to the full panoply of rules that governs the traditional fission industry. That should encourage investment and experimentation with an elusive but promising technology.

Nuclear energy won’t solve the climate challenge, but it must play an indispensable part. That this effort passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support — building, in fact, on provisions passed during Donald Trump’s presidency — is further cause for optimism. The green transition has forced the U.S. to confront decades of accumulated red tape, veto points and legal obstacles, which combined have made it all but impossible to build new things at a reasonable cost. At long last, change is in the air.