One Year After the ADVANCE Act: SMRs, Licensing Milestones and Grid Reality

A year after the 9 July 2024 signing of the ADVANCE Act, celebrated by Senate and House leaders after votes of 88 to 2 and 393 to 13, the United States nuclear conversation remains bifurcated. On one side sits licensing and institutional reform at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. On the other sit construction schedules, fuel supply and interconnection for both existing units and first advanced projects. Applicants and pre-applicants look for clearer fee treatment, more predictable review timelines, and pathways suited to advanced designs and potential micro-reactors.

Licence renewals and uprates on operating reactors move more megawatt-hours in the late 2020s than first-of-a-kind small modular reactors will. Interest in placing advanced reactors near data centres or on retiring fossil sites is commercially understandable. High-assay low-enriched uranium and enrichment capacity remain strategic constraints for some advanced designs. A year on, the ADVANCE Act is best treated as necessary institutional maintenance.