The US Department of Energy has directed new federal funding toward advanced reactor deployment and a major plant restart, reinforcing the government's push to expand domestic nuclear capacity. The department selected the Tennessee Valley Authority and Holtec to each receive 400 million dollars in cost-shared funding to support early deployments of advanced light-water small modular reactors.

Holtec plans to use its award to help deploy two SMR-300 reactors at the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station site in Michigan, pairing the new construction with the restart already underway at that location. The Tennessee Valley Authority funding supports its own advanced reactor program as the utility works toward early SMR deployment.

Separately, the Department of Energy announced the financial close of a 1 billion dollar loan to Constellation to help finance the Crane Clean Energy Center restart, the former Three Mile Island site on the Susquehanna River in Londonderry Township, Pennsylvania. The loan provides direct federal financing for returning the shuttered reactor to service.

The awards build on broader appropriations. Earlier in 2026, Congress passed an Energy and Water Development bill that directed 1.785 billion dollars to the Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy, with additional funds reprogrammed toward cost-shared projects under the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. Together, the funding measures show the federal government using grants and loans to lower the financing risk of both restarts and first-of-a-kind reactor projects across the United States.

Source: World Nuclear News - https://world-nuclear-news.org/articles/two-smr-projects-selected-for-us-federal-funding