The Department of Energy quietly released a draft this month of a plan to double America’s nuclear power capacity, not only with the small modular reactors championed by Secretaries Ernest Moniz and Steven Chu, but also with advanced reactors that do not rely on water for cooling.
DOE’s “Draft Vision and Strategy for the Development and Deployment of Advanced Reactors” seems to have escaped media attention until now. It calls for two advanced reactor concepts to be licensed and ready for construction in the early 2030s as the first phase of a strategic deployment.
