Republican legislators urge Trump to provide support for small nuclear reactor development
A group of 17 Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives recently sent a letter to President Trump, urging him to include support for small nuclear reactor development in his fiscal 2018 spending plan.
The letter specifically called for funding for the U.S. Department of Energy’s small modular reactor (SMR) program, a public-private cost-share SMR licensing technical support program to help accelerate the development of SMRs. Congress appropriated $95 million in fiscal 2017 to fund the program.
“Funding for the SMR program should be increased in fiscal 2018, to expand ongoing work to include development of advanced manufacturing methods and other technologies important to SMRs,” SMR Start spokesperson James Gaston said.
Canada and the United Kingdom have expressed interest in U.S. small reactor technologies. Other countries, including Argentina, China, Russia and South Korea, are developing their own SMR designs, both for domestic use and export internationally. In their letter, the representatives asked the president to “help reestablish the United States as the world leader” in advanced nuclear technologies.
U.S. companies have invested over $1 billion in SMR development to date.
“The payoff is tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs, thousands of construction jobs per plant, hundreds of operations jobs per plant, and billions of dollars in U.S. exports in a foreign market that will expand rapidly, with or without us,” John Hopkins, chairman and CEO of NuScale Power, a leading U.S. SMR developer, said. “With us, we ensure that the U.S. national security interests for nuclear safety and non-proliferation are met.”
