Title 42 › Chapter CHAPTER 149— - NATIONAL ENERGY POLICY AND PROGRAMS › Subchapter SUBCHAPTER IX— - RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT › Part Part E— - Nuclear Energy › § 16274
The Secretary must run a program to grow people and facilities for nuclear science, nuclear engineering, radiochemistry, and health physics tied to civilian nuclear work. The program must fund student and graduate fellowships (including time at National Laboratories with mentors), junior faculty research-start grants, basic research and education, partnerships among universities, labs, government, industry, and unions, and outreach. It must also fund professor sabbaticals at National Laboratories and visits by lab scientists to university departments. The Secretary can pay to convert research reactors to low-enriched fuel, upgrade instruments and university lab infrastructure, support regional university consortia to share reactors and provide technical project services, train students with industry on relicensing and upgrades, and improve reactors for research and education. A special subprogram must demonstrate advanced reactor and microreactor ideas, set up medical isotope reactors or other special uses, and build needed research facilities. That subprogram can create no more than 4 new research reactors, and those reactors cannot use high-enriched uranium. New reactors and facilities should support the regional consortia and encourage participation by historically Black colleges and universities, Tribal colleges, minority-serving institutions, EPSCoR universities, and junior or community colleges. The Department must expand fuel services for these reactors. The Department should, when possible, put 20 percent of annual nuclear R&D funds (not including the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program) into competitive, university-led research and infrastructure. Grant money can pay part of a university research reactor’s operating and maintenance costs. Money is authorized as follows: $55,000,000 each year for fiscal years 2023 through 2027 for infrastructure upgrades and regional consortia; $45,000,000 for FY2023, $60,000,000 for FY2024, $65,000,000 for FY2025, $80,000,000 for FY2026, and $140,000,000 for FY2027 for the advanced infrastructure subprogram; $20,000,000 each year for fiscal years 2021 through 2025 for project management and technical support to university reactors; and $5,000,000 each year for fiscal years 2023 through 2027 for a nuclear energy traineeship subprogram. The traineeship program must award competitive traineeships with universities, encourage partnerships with labs, community colleges, trade schools, apprenticeships, and industry, and check yearly what workforce training is needed. Definitions (one line each): junior faculty — a faculty member who earned a doctorate less than 10 years before getting a grant; junior or community college — a public school that mainly awards associate degrees or a Tribal college; EPSCoR university — an institution in a State eligible under the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010; historically Black college or university, minority-serving institution, and Tribal College or University — as those terms are defined in the cited parts of title 20.
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The Public Health and Welfare — Source: USLM XML via OLRC
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42 U.S.C. § 16274
Title 42 — The Public Health and Welfare
Last Updated
Apr 6, 2026
Release point: 119-73