The Trump DOE Just Streamlined the Award Process

At a pivotal moment for America’s nuclear future, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) reissued a $900 million funding opportunity for the Generation III+ Small Modular Reactor (GEN III+ SMR) Program. As the solicitation details make clear, the Trump DOE is taking major steps to streamline the award process.

The newly released funding opportunity is clear evidence that the Trump administration is ready to move forward with programs that can unlock U.S. energy dominance. When announcing its re-release, DOE Secretary Chris Wright was abundantly clear: “America’s nuclear energy renaissance starts now.”

Public-private partnerships, including this program and the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP), are crucial for delivering reliable nuclear power to meet growing energy needs and strengthen energy security. The revised solicitation aligns with existing policy proposals that prioritize de-risking early projects, aiming to bolster order books for new nuclear projects.

Funded by Congress through 2024 appropriations, the GEN III+ SMR program will support up to two awardees to deploy an SMR to facilitate a multi-reactor order book, long a priority for House Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee Chair Rep. Fleischmann (R-TN).

The Trump administration announced significant updates to the solicitation to advance its policy goal of unleashing American energy. This includes removing unnecessary requirements implemented by the Biden administration that were unrelated to the technical and economic success of innovative projects, like mandatory community benefit plans and Justice40 requirements from both the application and evaluation criteria.

These actions are aligned with the proposal ClearPath published last year to Modernize the U.S. Department of Energy. The changes to the re-released FOAs signify a renewed focus on technical merit and removing application components that unnecessarily complicate the process.

The original solicitation issued by the Biden administration placed significant emphasis on mandatory community benefit plans, with some programs weighing these factors as much as 20% in the final evaluation criteria. While community engagement remains an important consideration for long-term project viability, assigning such a high weight to non-technical factors created an unnecessary hurdle for many applicants, especially smaller firms and first-time participants in DOE programs.

The revised solicitation prioritizes four policy factors, weighing them equally to assess the applicant’s ability to deliver a safe, technically sound and commercially viable SMR project. These adjustments represent the kind of streamlined, outcome-driven policymaking the DOE should continue applying across other funding initiatives. 

With these changes incorporated, the Trump administration can further streamline the award negotiation process by adhering to strict award negotiation timelines and accelerating permitting reviews for demonstration projects. Incorporating clear and consistent award criteria across all DOE offices will benefit all types of applicants and remedy the years-long contracting process that plagued the Biden administration. Similarly, DOE should treat demonstration project permits the same way it treats earlier-stage research and development (R&D) by adding demonstration activities to the existing categorical exclusion from NEPA reviews. ClearPath previously illustrated these opportunities as ways to Make America’s Largest Clean Energy Investor More Efficient.

As electricity demand grows and the U.S. seeks reliable and clean energy sources, SMRs offer a promising solution. DOE’s updated approach puts these projects on firmer footing and if applied more broadly, could serve as a blueprint for how the DOE accelerates innovation across the board. This reissued solicitation aligns with a more disciplined, deployment-first strategy. It reduces unnecessary red tape and better reflects the DOE’s core mission – to accelerate transformative energy technologies out of the lab and to the market.

Also contributing to this blog was our Policy Intern, John Van Fossen.