The ADVANCE Act, explained: what changed and where the NRC stands

The ADVANCE Act is the 2024 law (Public Law 118-67, signed July 9, 2024) that re-pointed the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission toward enabling nuclear deployment — cutting review fees for advanced reactors by more than half, opening reactor ownership to allied-nation companies, rewriting the agency's mission statement, and binding the NRC to 36 tracked implementation milestones. Two years on, most of it is done, and the review-time data says it's working.

Key facts

• Advanced reactor applicants pay $148 per professional hour versus the standard $318 — a 53% cut, effective October 1, 2025
• 31 of 36 implementation milestones complete as of April 30, 2026, per the Nuclear Innovation Alliance's tracker
• Foreign ownership: the Act lifted the Atomic Energy Act bar for companies from OECD countries and India
• Measured speed-ups on the NRC's own efficiency page: Hermes 2 permit 10 months vs 14 planned; Kemmerer 18 vs 27; NuScale US460 approval 22 vs 24
• The NRC's new mission language — "enabling the safe and secure use and deployment" of nuclear technology — was reported to Congress November 18, 2025

What the Act actually changed

Five things matter most. Fees: a reduced hourly rate for advanced-reactor reviews, implemented in the FY2025 fee rule. Timelines: expedited procedures and prizes (DOE-reimbursed licensing costs) for first movers — no prize has been claimed yet. Ownership: investors from OECD members and India can now own US reactors, unlocking capital structures that were previously illegal. Mission: Section 501 added deployment-enabling language to the NRC's statement of purpose — a cultural signal that regulators cite in efficiency initiatives. Fuel and siting groundwork: an NRC-DOE fuel coordination agreement, micro-reactor licensing strategies (completed January 2026), and a report on licensing reactors at brownfield and retired fossil sites.

The 36 milestones — the scoreboard

The NRC tracks every statutory deliverable on a public dashboard. As of April 30, 2026 the count stood at 31 of 36 complete. What remains is the tail: the advanced-fuel licensing report (due July 2026), implementation of brownfield-site licensing (2026–27), micro-reactor licensing implementation and a corporate-support-cost report (both due July 2027). The pattern in the completed items is consistent — reports, rules and fee changes landed on or ahead of schedule.

Is licensing actually faster? The numbers say yes

This is the question the industry asks most, and the NRC now publishes the answer. On its licensing efficiencies page: Kairos' Hermes 2 construction permit completed in 10 months against a 14-month schedule; TerraPower's Kemmerer Unit 1 permit in 18 months against 27 — the first commercial fast-reactor permit in 50 years, delivered a third faster than planned; and NuScale's US460 design approval in 22 months against 24. The agency's standing target is at least a 15% cut in review durations and resource estimates. Whether those gains hold as application volume grows is the real test — the current wins came while the docket was still thin.

What the ADVANCE Act is not

The Act gets credit (and blame) for things it didn't do, because a second reform wave followed it. The May 2025 executive orders — not the Act — ordered the 18-month comprehensive rewrite of NRC regulations, created the DOE test-reactor authorization path, and drove the proposal to remove ALARA from radiation protection rules. The biggest post-Act deliverable, the final Part 53 rule of March 2026 — the first new reactor licensing framework since 1989, targeting design approvals in 18 months or less — completed a rulemaking Congress originally mandated in 2019's NEIMA and the EO then accelerated. Keeping the threads separate matters: the Act is statute and survives administrations; executive-order reforms can be reversed as fast as they arrived.

Why it matters for what gets built

Cheaper reviews change developer behavior at the margin — a 53% fee cut on a multi-year review is real money for a startup — but the deeper effect is predictability. Fixed milestones, published performance data and a deployment-oriented mission converted licensing from an open-ended risk into something closer to a scheduled cost, which is precisely the shift NNN's Core Analysis on licensing-as-product argues now defines competition between reactor vendors. For the mechanics of the process the Act reformed, see the NRC reactor licensing process, explained.

Current state (August 2026)

Fee relief is in force a second fiscal year; 31-plus of 36 milestones are complete with the remainder due by mid-2027; Part 53 is final and effective; and the NRC's published review-time data shows permits landing months ahead of schedule. The open questions are whether the July 2026 deliverables land on time, whether any first mover claims a licensing prize, and whether speed survives the coming surge of applications.