Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV), and John Barrasso (R-WY), introduced the Fission for the Future Act on Dec. 16, whose purpose is to back the commercial deployment of advanced nuclear reactors to economically-depressed communities, according to a report in Nuclear Newswire Dec. 20. Sen. Manchin is the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee; Sen. Barrasso is that committee’s ranking member.
Introduced on December 16, the legislation would prioritize communities affected by the closure of coal and other fossil-fueled generating facilities and assist in the reuse of those sites to deploy advanced nuclear power plants, promoting job growth in economically depressed regions. The two Senators introduced the same bill during the last Congress, but there was very little funding associated with it. The recently-passed infrastructure bill does contain funding provisions for subsidizing existing nuclear plants to keep them from being shut down, but it’s unclear whether funding would be available for the new reactors that Manchin and Barrasso are proposing.
