Public Policy & Engagement

In the past week, two pieces of nuclear legislation moved forward in two Midwestern states.

In Wisconsin, a bill to create new tax credits for new power plants passed through the state Assembly and went to the Senate, while in Indiana, a bill to simplify the state approval process for new plants passed through the state Senate and went to the House.

Katy Huff, former assistant secretary of nuclear energy at the Department of Energy, recently wrote an op-ed that was published in Scientific American.

In the piece, Huff, who is an ANS member and an associate professor in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign, argues that weakening Nuclear Regulatory Commission radiation regulations without new research-based evidence will fail to speed up nuclear energy development and could have negative consequences.

On January 15, in an 82–14 vote, the U.S. Senate passed an Energy and Water Development appropriations bill to fund the U.S. Department of Energy for fiscal year 2026 as part of a broader package that also funded the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.