Statement on the draft FY 2021 funding bill issued by the House Appropriations Committee

July 6, 2020, 2:45PMPress Releases

Statement from the American Nuclear Society’s Executive Director/CEO Craig Piercy on the draft FY 2021 Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies funding bill issued by the House Appropriations Committee:

"ANS is thrilled to see $1.25 billion appropriated for advanced reactor demonstration programs, on top of the $1.44 billion marked for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy. Those levels would nearly double the office’s budget – a real game changer if enacted.”

In comparison, the $1.49 billion appropriated for the Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) in the initiated FY 2020 budget encompassed the entirety of nuclear energy funding allocated that year.

From 1998 to 2015, NE had also dedicated only $2 billion over 18 years to all advanced reactor and fuel initiatives, as research published in 2017 in Environmental Research Letters showed. By the DOE’s own estimates these funding levels were too low to actually ready one design for commercial deployment.


Related Articles