원자력에너지 프로젝트 (NUCLEAR ENERGY PROJECTS)
본 보고서는 관계자 인터뷰를 통한 새로운 유형의 모듈 원자로와 관련된 종합적인 평가 내용을 제공합니다.
September 8, 2022 The Honorable Diane Feinstein Chair Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development Committee on Appropriations United States Senate The Honorable Eddie Bernice Johnson Chairwoman Committee on Science, Space, and Technology House of Representatives In 2021, nuclear energy accounted for almost 20 percent of the electricity generated in the United States and provided about 50 percent of the nation’s carbon-free electricity. However, the existing commercial reactor fleet is aging, and economic challenges have led to the closure or planned shutdown of multiple nuclear power plants. To address these challenges, the Department of Energy (DOE) supports the research, development, demonstration, and deployment of new nuclear reactor types. These include small modular reactors, which are smaller than existing commercial reactors, and advanced reactors, which are expected to offer significant improvements over the most recent generation of nuclear reactors. According to DOE, the federal government has a unique role to play in reducing the financial and technical risks faced by companies seeking to develop these new, first-of-a-kind technologies. In fiscal year 2021, DOE made awards to three multi-billion dollar projects to support the demonstration of first-of-a-kind small modular and advanced reactors.1 First, DOE approved an award to the Carbon Free Power Project to help demonstrate and deploy a small modular reactor power plant. Second, DOE, through its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP), approved two awards to build power plants using Science, and Loan Programs Office. We then assessed DOE’s management of these awards against relevant leading practices. We also reviewed relevant laws, regulations, and agency guidance regarding financial assistance awards and identified selected requirements that we determined will likely have a significant impact on the supported projects’ goals and operations or financial risks to the federal government.6 We then assessed DOE’s management of the awards against the selected requirements. Further, we interviewed officials from DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy and Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, which oversee the three demonstration projects, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regarding DOE’s management of these projects.7 In addition, we interviewed representatives from the three awardees. We also interviewed stakeholders from a company that had received prior DOE support for the technology being demonstrated in one of the projects, another company that received an award for a different advanced reactor technology, and a nuclear industry trade organization. We identified these stakeholders using a “snowball sampling” technique. We then selected a subset of these groups to interview based on their knowledge of DOE’s management of small modular and advanced reactor demonstrations.8 Views from the selected stakeholders cannot be generalized. We conducted this performance audit from September 2021 to September 2022, in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.
국내외 전문자료
2023-08-31
국내외 전문자료원자력 에너지 프로젝트 (NUCLEAR ENERGY PROJECTS)
- 국가미국
- 발행기관DOE (에너지부)
- 원본링크https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-105394
- 첨부파일
- 파일이 없습니다.