(The Center Square) — Louisiana legislators advanced a bill designed to streamline environmental permitting for advanced nuclear power projects, a move that aligns the state with a broader national push to accelerate next-generation reactor deployment.
The legislation blew through the House Natural Resources committee without objection.
Senate Bill 127, authored by Sen. Adam Bass, R-Bossier City, would allow electric utilities to expedite permits for small modular reactors and other advanced nuclear projects, provided those efforts align with collaborative agreements with federal agencies such as the U.S. Department of Energy or the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“We’re not asking for the authority to do anything that we don’t already have the authority to do, just to do what we do quicker,” Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Courtney Burdette told the committee. “So work with our federal partners to get these these air and water permits through the system faster, cut down red tape and hopefully not be the hold up for these projects.”
Last year, former President Joe Biden signed into law the ADVANCE Act, which significantly overhauled the NRC’s permitting processes and boosted federal resources for nuclear development.
The federal law aims to eliminate key bottlenecks in the regulatory process, making it easier — and faster — for companies to launch advanced nuclear projects.
The ADVANCE Act directs the NRC to collaborate more closely with the Department of Energy, increases staffing levels, and offers incentives — including grants and licensing cost coverage — for early developers of new reactor technologies.
“If you started today, you’re probably still six to seven years away from a functioning reactor — but that’s a huge improvement from the 15 to 18 years we used to see,” Bass said, referencing timelines in states like Virginia, Texas, and Wyoming, which began similar permitting reforms in 2023.
Logan Burke, executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy, said in an interview that tradition reactors have come at a massive cost for ratepayers.
“We’ve seen it before — look at Vogtle in Georgia, which took nearly 15 years to complete and cost more than twice the original estimates. Or the project in South Carolina that bankrupted a utility before it ever produced power.”
A 2024 study from the Copenhagen School of Business found that nuclear power projects are rarely viable without substantial government support. These projects often rely on loan and revenue guarantees, public ownership stakes, and regulations that shift construction costs to future ratepayers.
The report notes that these financial backstops make the projects more attractive to investors by transferring risk to taxpayers. That risk can be considerable — Georgia’s Vogtle plant, for example, took nearly 15 years to complete and cost $34 billion, more than double initial estimates.
Originally slated to come online in 2017, Units 3 and 4 were completed in 2023 and 2024 and are expected to produce 17.2 million megawatt-hours of carbon-free electricity annually, according to the Department of Energy.
One big beneficiary of streamlining the permitting process are small scale reactor companies.
“You’re spending half a billion dollars on paperwork,” said Jay Jiang Yu, founder of NANO Nuclear Energy Inc., in an interview. “If the ADVANCE act can actually come in and reduce the cost and the timeline, you’re saving potentially hundreds of millions of dollars that could be used toward physical work.”
Companies like NANO have hailed the changes as a breakthrough for the industry, cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in regulatory costs and shaving years off deployment timelines.
NANO develops the sorts of small scale reactors Bass hopes to target with his bill.
“In order to make a decision, the financial risk of these projects needs to come down,” Jacopo Buongiorno, professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The Center Square in a previous interview. “Whoever will be the user of these machines has a certain tolerance for project risk.”
SMRs could be a potential way to soften that financial risk by offering several advantages over traditional large-scale reactors. Their compact size requires for less financial assistance, thus expanding nuclear without burdening ratepayers.
This article was originally published at www.thecentersquare.com
